Transcript

QATAR | Page 20
SPORT | Page 1
Seminar shines spotlight on
conservation of dugongs
Qatar
reach U-19
World Cup
after two
decades
INDEX
QATAR
2, 20
ARAB WORLD
INTERNATIONAL
3-5
6-16
ISLAM
17
COMMENT
BUSINESS
CLASSIFIED
SPORT
18, 19
1-8
5
1-12
DOW JONES
QE
NYMEX
16,380.41
12,942.00
82.93
+263.17
+1.63%
-387.02
-2.90%
+0.23
+0.28%
Latest Figures
pu
QATAR | Health
Precautionary
measures
The Animal Wealth Department
(AWD) at the Ministry of
Environment has stepped up its
precautionary measures to face any
potential cases of Mers coronavirus
(Mers-CoV) among the livestock in
Qatar,Arabic daily Arrayah reported
yesterday. The initiative comes in
the wake of the Supreme Council of
Health announcing earlier this week
the first confirmed Mers Corona
Virus case in the country for the
year 2014. The AWD has been in a
constant state of alertness since the
report of the first case of infection
in 2012 and the suspicion that
the disease could be passed from
camels and animals to humans. AWD
has also randomly taken samples
from animals at all the farms
throughout the country for tests. All
the tests have been negative.
AFRICA | Ceasefire
Nigeria claims deal
with Boko Haram
Nigeria yesterday claimed to have
reached a deal with Boko Haram
militants on a ceasefire and the
release of more than 200 kidnapped
schoolgirls. Chief of Defence Staff
Air Marshal Alex Badeh told senior
military officials from Nigeria
and Cameroon meeting in Abuja
that a “ceasefire agreement” had
been concluded between the
government and the insurgents.
Badeh’s announcement came after
a senior aide to President Goodluck
Jonathan, Hassan Tukur, told AFP
an agreement to end hostilities had
been reached following talks, as well
as for the release of 219 girls held
captive since April. Page 6
WORLD | Weather
Bermuda prepares for
big hit from hurricane
Hurricane Gonzalo began pounding
the Bermuda coast with high waves,
driving rain and gusting winds
yesterday as one of the strongest
storms to hit the tiny Atlantic
island chain. Gonzalo was swirling
about 165km south-southwest of
the British island chain and had
weakened slightly, with sustained
winds dropping to 205kph, the US
National Hurricane Center said.
QATAR | Diplomacy
Emir, Afghan leader
hold phone talks
HH the Emir Sheikh Tamim bin
Hamad al-Thani yesterday held
via telephone a conversation with
Afghanistan President Dr Mohamed
Ashraf Ghani. The conversation
dealt with relations between the two
countries and ways to develop them.
in
In brief
d
Gaza rally to defend Al Aqsa mosque
he R
is
bl TA 978
A 1
Q since
GULF TIMES
SATURDAY Vol. XXXV No. 9514
October 18, 2014
Dhul-Hijja 24, 1435 AH
www. gulf-times.com 2 Riyals
Research
projects
in Qatar
get a boost
Qatar collaborates with more
than 175 universities and research
centres in the European Union on
various projects
Joseph Varghese
Staff Reporter
Q
A Palestinian holding a placard reading “Jerusalem is in danger” during a rally in Gaza City yesterday. Hundreds of people
participated in the Hamas-organised rally over Jerusalem’s Al Aqsa mosque, the scene of recurring clashes between Israeli
security forces and Palestinians in recent days. Leaving mosques after prayers in Gaza City, they chanted slogans pledging to
defend the mosque. The rally was attended by various Palestinian factions. Also yesterday, Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas
called on his people to prevent Israeli settlers from entering Al Aqsa mosque and use “all means” to protect the site. “It is not
enough to say the settlers came, but they must be barred from entering the compound by any means. This is our Aqsa... and
they have no right to enter it and desecrate it,” Abbas said. Page 3
Iraq the ‘top priority’ in
US-led ﬁght against IS
AFP
Washington
C
onfronting the Islamic State (IS)
group in Iraq is the “main” priority for the US-led ﬁght against
the militants, while strikes in Syria are
designed to disrupt the group’s supply
lines, the US commander overseeing
the air war said yesterday.
Even with the world’s attention
ﬁxed on the fate of the northern Syrian
town of Kobane, General Lloyd Austin
said Iraq was the primary battleground
for the air campaign.
“Iraq is our main effort, and it has to
be,” Austin told reporters.
“And the things that we’re doing
right now in Syria are being done primarily to shape the conditions in Iraq,”
he said.
US-led air raids in Syria are serving
as a way to undercut the group’s ability
to reinforce and resupply its ﬁghters in
Iraq, he said.
In his ﬁrst press conference since the
air campaign was launched in Iraq on
August 8, Austin said it would take time
before Iraqi government forces were
truly effective and declined to say when
the army would be ready to stage major
offensives to recapture lost territory in
Mosul or elsewhere.
“It’s difficult to ...designate a speciﬁc
point in time when they’ll be able to do
this.”
Iraqi army troops have suffered a
string of setbacks in western Anbar
province, raising fears that Baghdad
could come under pressure and the airport endangered.
But Austin said the airport was not at
risk of falling to the IS group.
“I feel fairly conﬁdent that the airﬁeld is secure and will be secure for the
foreseeable future,” he said.
It was possible the IS could ﬁre a
mortar round at the airﬁeld, but similar incidents occurred during the US
occupation of Iraq in 2003-2011 and
did not force the closure of the airport, he said.
“This is something that we monitor
- we patrol on a routine basis,” he said,
adding that US Apache helicopters,
drone surveillance aircraft and Iraqi
forces all help guard the airport.
Although defeating IS in Iraq was
the top goal, Austin acknowledged US
aircraft had been pounding the group’s
ﬁghters around the Syrian border town
of Kobane this week with dozens of
bombing raids.
He said the strikes were a response
to IS moving in large numbers around
the town, making itself vulnerable to
attacks from the air.
“Now, my goal is to defeat and ultimately destroy ISIL (IS). And if he
continues to present us with major
targets, as he has done in the Kobane
area, then clearly, we’ll service those
targets, and we’ve done so very, very
effectively here of late,” Austin said.
There have been “encouraging” signs
in recent days in the battle over the Syrian border town of Kobane, with US air
strikes slowing the advance of Islamic
State militants, he said.
But he acknowledged the town
could still fall to the IS group, despite
stiff resistance from Kurdish militia
and stepped up US bombing raids.
“But .. .I think the things that we
have done here in the last several days
are encouraging. And we’re seeing the
Kurds actually ﬁght to regain territory that had been lost previously,” the
general said. Pages 4, 10
atar University (QU) will collaborate with Horizon 2020,
the European Union’s biggest
research programme, in conducting research on diabetes and smart city applications. Horizon 2020 has nearly €80bn
available for research and innovation.
“The talks are in the initial stages
about the modalities of conducting the
research,” Dr Hassan al-Derham, vice
president for research, QU, told Gulf
Times on the sidelines of an information
session on Horizon 2020 at the Research
Complex of QU.
“Qatar University is keen to collaborate with international organisations’
research bodies and universities for
research on topics related to the needs
of the country and the region. We have
discussed with the Horizon 2020 team
for possibilities of collaboration in the
research of diabetes and smart city applications,” he explained.
“We will be forming teams for research activities in these areas in the
near future. The teams will consist of
researchers from Qatar and the Arab
states on one side and the European researchers on the other. More details will
be discussed once the teams are formed.
The information session will throw
more light on the projects.”
Dr al-Derham pointed out that QU
already had undertaken a major initiative for intelligent transportation system. “We also have programmes related
for sustainable development for smart
buildings and connectivity as well as
raising the quality of the life of the people
in the country. We will try to incorporate
our expertise and experience in these
ﬁelds and will try more innovations.”
The vice president pointed out that
QU was already collaborating with more
than 175 universities and research centres in the European Union on various
projects.
“We take every opportunity to deepen research and enhance innovation.
The recently announced research road
map of the university for 2014 – 2019
is mainly on energy, environment, resource sustainability, social change and
social identities, population health and
wellness and information technology.
Dr al-Derham: says Qatar University is
keen to collaborate with international
organisations’ research bodies.
We would like to share our knowledge
while making use of the expertise of EU
researchers in many of these ﬁelds.”
Several officials of Horizon 2020,
leading researchers from the country were present on the occasion. Dr
Elizabeth Lipiatou, European Commission head for Africa and the Gulf,
and Thierry Devars, director general
for research, European Commission,
briefed participants on the features of
the programme.
Horizon 2020 has opened the plans
to promote co-operation in research
projects between the Gulf countries
and the European Union. According to
the officials of Horizon 2020, there will
be future events which will form the
framework of the whole project.
GE pledges to build
Qatari human capital
Global industrial technology firm
GE is keen on opening more career
opportunities for local engineering
students in aviation and also double its
Qatari workforce in the company’s oil
and gas research facility. Parmjit Khera,
leader of the GE Advanced Technology
Research Centre (ATRC), told Gulf Times
that “one of the central commitments of
the GE Aviation business at ATRC is to
promote localised innovation and build
Qatari human capital”. Housed inside
the Qatar Science & Technology Park
(QSTP), the 13,400sqm ATRC focuses
on applied research and knowledge
transfer across GE’s four business
divisions on global research, oil and gas,
aviation, and healthcare. Page 20
Garcia report cannot be published in full: FIFA
Reuters
Berne
T
he report into the bidding process for the rights to host the next
two World Cups cannot be made
fully public for legal reasons, though
excerpts of it may be, FIFA’s ethics
judge Hans-Joachim Eckert said yesterday.
Eckert is still studying the report
produced by his counterpart Michael
Garcia into whether there was corruption in the process which led to
the 2018 tournament being awarded
to Russia and the 2022 event to Qatar,
and expects to issue a statement on his
ﬁndings by mid-November.
“The statement will contain an overview of the investigation report, a summary of the main ﬁndings, conclusions
and recommendations of the report, as
well as a brief evaluation of the same,”
Eckert said in an interview published
on FIFA’s website.
One of his tasks would be to decide
which parts of the report could be made
public, he added.
Eckert cannot strip either Russia or
Qatar from hosting their tournaments
but can press charges against individuals.
Several members of FIFA’s own executive committee have called for the report to be made public, as well as FIFA
Hans-Joachim Eckert: FIFA’s ethics judge
presidential candidate Jerome Champagne, a decision which Eckert said fell
exclusively to him and his deputy Alan
Sullivan.
Speaking in London on Monday,
Garcia criticised FIFA for not conducting its ethics investigations in an open
manner and called for the report to be
made public in line with “the goals of
the reform process”.
However, Eckert said that Garcia had
not called for full publication of the
ﬁndings.
“Michael Garcia has never said that
the report should be 100% published.
He merely said that the ‘appropriate’
publication of his report should be authorised,” Eckert said.
“The deputy chairman of the adjudicatory chamber and I now have the task
of drawing up this appropriate form for
publication.
“Part of my current examination involves deciding what form this appropriate publication should take, whether
this means issuing a statement regarding the investigation report or whether
certain parts of the investigation report
will be published while maintaining
anonymity, or indeed a combination of
these possibilities,” he said.
“This decision is exclusively a matter for the adjudicatory chamber (of the
ethics committee) - neither the investigatory chamber nor the FIFA Executive Committee can decide. The main
requirement is that personal rights
must not be damaged.”
Eckert added: “Publishing the report
in full would actually put the FIFA ethics committee and FIFA itself in a very
difficult situation legally.
“What is more, we have to respect
the personal rights of the people mentioned in the report, which in the case
of full publication of the report would
in all likelihood not be possible.”
Qatar, which was awarded the 2022
tournament nearly four years ago, has
repeatedly denied all allegations of
corruption. The 2018 tournament was
awarded to Russia as part of the same
bidding process which culminated in
December 2010.
2
Gulf Times
Saturday, October 18, 2014
QATAR
MICE industry offers
‘great opportunity’
By Peter Alagos
Business Reporter
T
he meetings, incentives,
conferences, and exhibition (MICE) industry
poses as a “great opportunity”
for Qatar to showcase its capabilities and ﬂexibility as a
host destination, an official of
the Qatar MICE Development
Institute (QMDI) has said.
Abdulaziz al-Kuwari, acting
director (sales and marketing),
QMDI, said the success of an
event will attract interest and
position Qatar to entice more
companies and event orgainsers
to bring large conferences and
exhibitions to the country.
Al-Kuwari stated that Qatar
has set its sights on becoming a
global meetings destination as
it had invested more than $20bn
in tourism-related infrastructure that will boost the country’s
MICE credentials.
“Being part of the MICE
industry in Qatar, I strongly
believe that this industry is a
key pillar of the economic diversiﬁcation and growth of the
Cyber
security
summit
to begin
on Dec 1
T
he inaugural “Qatar Conﬁdential – The Cyber Security Summit 2014” will
be held at the Doha Marriott on
December 1 and 2.
The summit, which has been
designed to help combat the growing cyber threat against both state
and industry interests in Qatar and
the Middle East, will attract wide
interest in the region and address
both civil and military cyber security activities, according to a statement issued by the organisers.
The event is being held by
Tangent Link, a specialist UKbased conference and exhibition organiser, and sponsored by
malomatia and BAE Systems. It is
supported by Qatar’s Ministry of
Defence, Ministry of Interior and
Ministry of Information & Communications Technology.
The summit will give attendees
the opportunity to hear from leading industry and military cyber
specialists. Besides, in the light of
the 2022 FIFA World Cup, special
attention will be given to the session on Securing Major Events,
chaired by the International Centre
for Sport Security based in Doha.
With its growing international
proﬁle creating greater awareness of the country’s wealth, Qatar has recently been particularly
vulnerable, making it an attractive target for cyber attacks. The
resulting breaches have ranged
from “medium” to “highly” dangerous in the levels of threat they
have posed to its networks.
Consequently, the statement
notes, the Qatari government
is investing in a comprehensive
protection programme in preparation for the 2022 FIFA World
Cup. Security and fraud prevention measures are expected to
ﬁgure strongly.
Qatar has already implemented a National Security Shield
Project and the IT network of
ministries and government bodies will be completely secure
by 2016, the statement further
states, adding that the country
now wishes to lead the way in
developing and employing cyber
protection and assert itself as a
model for cyber security.
Leading industry and military
cyber specialists at the summit
will include James Lewis, director and senior fellow, Strategic
Technologies Programme, Centre for Strategic & International
Studies, US; and General James
Cartwright, former vice-chairman, joint chief of staff & Harold
Brown Chair in Defence Policy
Studies, Centre for Strategic &
International Studies.
To book as a delegate or ﬁnd
out more about the summit, visit
www.tangentlink.com
country,” al-Kuwari stressed.
He noted that luxury hotels,
world-class aviation facilities,
and high-proﬁle events will
command the attention of industry leaders to further invest
in the country.
Also, al-Kuwari said the hosting of the 2022 FIFA World Cup
was instrumental in raising
awareness about the country’s
strengths as a MICE destination
and put Qatar on the global tourism map.
According to QMDI official,
established source markets for
the regional meetings industry
are being challenged by emerging markets led by India and
China, which, in turn, are reshaping the dynamics of the
Middle East market.
“Gulf countries seeking tourism growth are all looking eastward whether for business or
leisure guests,” al-Kuwari noted.
Quoting a report from Euromonitor International, al-Kuwari
said China and India are set to be
in the top two markets in terms
of absolute growth in outbound
visitor numbers up to 2016.
China, home to the world’s
fastest growing source of outbound travellers (65mn in 2011),
will have more than 100mn outbound travellers by 2020, according to the UN World Tourism
Organisation (UNWTO).
India will spawn more than
50mn travellers with a spending power of $28bn per year, it
added.
The Dubai Convention Bureau
(DCB), which opened offices
in Beijing and Shanghai in late
2010, generates 25% of its meeting and event business from the
Asia Paciﬁc region.
India was the UAE’s largest
trading partner in 2011 while
China held the number two spot.
The Middle East’s longstanding
source markets like the UK, Germany, and France are waning but
showing signiﬁcant growth from
the China and India markets,
al-Kuwari said.
Al-Kuwari said the World
Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report for 20132014, which ranks the world’s
fastest growing economies, has
placed Qatar in number 13 ahead
of other countries in the region
including the United Arab Emir-
ates (19th), Saudi Arabia (20th),
and Kuwait (36th).
“Differentiation will be the
key strategy to gain competitive
advantage for the MICE market,”
al-Kuwari stressed.
Quoting the latest UNWTO
barometer, al-Kuwari said receipts in destinations worldwide
from expenditure by international visitors on accommodation, food and drink, entertainment, shopping and goods,
and other services, reached an
estimated $1,159bn in 2013.
International tourism (travel
and passenger transport) accounts for 29% of the world’s exports of services and 6% of overall exports of goods and services.
As a worldwide export category,
tourism ranks ﬁfth after fuels,
chemicals, food, and automotive
products, while ranking ﬁrst in
many developing countries.
Asia and the Paciﬁc is the fastest growing region while Europe
takes the biggest share, which
accounts for 42% of all international tourism. In the Middle
East, total tourism receipts (4%
share) are estimated at $47bn,
UNWTO said.
A panoramic view of traffic near the Midmac intersection in Doha. PICTURE: Najeer Feroke.
Citizens demand
more traffic patrols
A
number of citizens have
urged the authorities
concerned to enhance
traffic patrols at important
roundabouts and intersections in order to ease vehicular
movement and prevent violations, especially in the peak
hours, local daily Arrayah has
reported.
Many roundabouts and intersections witness heavy congestion during the peak hours,
prompting some motorists to
commit violations such as using service lanes to overtake
vehicles, the report stated.
The daily monitored some of
these violations and took note
of different opinions about the
prevailing situation and what
could be done to deal with the
problems.
A citizen said the congestion on Doha’s roads is caused
partly by ongoing infrastructure projects, adding that a signiﬁcant increase in the number
of vehicles and the conduct of
some motorists are among the
other factors, according to the
report.
Another citizen referred to
the dangerous practice of over-
Airbus to display security Military recruits
solutions at Milipol Qatar attend meeting on
traffic awareness
A
T
irbus Defence and Space
will highlight its leading
homeland security solutions at Milipol Qatar 2014,
scheduled to begin on Monday
at the Doha Exhibition Centre.
The company will display
some of its latest products
and solutions ranging from
emergency response solution
and unmanned aerial systems
(UAS) surveillance, identiﬁcation and inspection aerial vectors to a range of cyber security
services.
Civion, one of the main exhibits in emergency response,
is a solution that integrates
all types of critical information seamlessly. In case of a
small incident up to a crisis at
district, city or national level,
Civion keeps public safety and
security agencies connected
and able to fulﬁll their mission.
The CiviLead command and
control solution integrated
with CiviSense, both components of Civion, grants ﬁrst
responders a clear situational
awareness in real time due to
an integrated camera and video
management software.
In the ﬁeld of UAS, the company is showcasing its Copter
4 and DVF2000 surveillance,
identiﬁcation and inspection
aerial vectors.
Copter 4, the ﬂagship model
of Survey Copter, the mini
and tactical UAS subsidiary
of Airbus Defence and Space,
is a 1h30 endurance mini UAS
double independent engines
helicopter with a mass of 30kg
and a rotor diametre of 2m
which can ﬂy up to a distance
of 25km at a maximum speed of
50km/hour.
The DVF2000 is a new generation ﬁxed-wing electroglider mini UAS operated by a
two-man team. With an endurance of two hours and a range
of about 50km, it is deployed in
less than 10 minutes.
Another focus is a cyber
security service for detecting
and ﬁghting advanced persistent threats. The solution
named Keelback combines
classic methods like signature
tracking, state-of-the-art detection based on behaviour
that reveals activities of attackers as well as weak signals
reconnaissance.
Customers beneﬁt from
a
real-time
identiﬁcation
and characterisation of cyber threats with the help of a
continuously updated intelligence database as well as advanced detection of attacks
through a combination of capabilities working on network
and on end-user-devices of
customers’ IT infrastructure.
he traffic awareness
and culture section in
the Traffic Department
has held an open meeting
with national military service
recruits at Ahmed bin Mohamed Military College, local
daily Arrayah has reported.
The meeting was attended
by some 1,000 participants.
Lectures and presentations were delivered by training officers from the Military
College and Traffic Department. Video clips and awareness ﬁlms were shown on
the causes of road accidents
and the most common trafﬁc violations. Various printed
awareness materials were also
distributed at the meeting,
according to the report.
In his speech, the chief
of the traffic awareness and
culture section stressed the
importance of the partnership with the military college and its role in spreading traffic awareness among
military recruits. He referred to traffic accidents,
their causes and means of
prevention and protection.
Another officer spoke
on the most common trafﬁc violations and the role
of awareness initiatives in
curbing accidents and minimising the risk involved and
impact on all members of
the community, the report
added.
A citizen who had sustained critical injuries in a
road accident spoke on the
lessons learnt and presented
some recommendations at
the meeting.
Industrial Area residents seek 24-hour pharmacy
By Ramesh Mathew
Staff Reporter
D
oha’s sprawling Industrial Area may be home
to a large number of
workers, but the place does not
have a single pharmacy that
operates round the clock, say
residents.
They point out that though
the place houses a large number
of establishments, including
eateries, and new residential
accommodations, no 24-hour
pharmacy can be found in the
entire area.
While those running pharmacies concede that the Industrial Area does need one or
two such facilities, which remain open 24 hours, due to the
signiﬁcant growth in its population over the last four-ﬁve
A view of Doha Industrial Area. PICTURE: Najeer Feroke
years, no one has come forward
yet to start one there.
Some people living in the
neighbourhood of Al Attiyah Market, the main business centre in the area, said
some medical shops work until
midnight.
“We have to go to places
outside the Industrial Area if
there is an emergency,” said a
resident who runs a workshop
in the area. He explained that a
number of industrial establishments function round the clock
in the area, and this is also why
the place needs a 24-hour
pharmacy. Similar responses
came from some food companies’ operators.
Besides some locations in
Doha, including Al Hilal, there
are 24-hour pharmacies in
Rayyan, Muaither, Al Wakrah,
Al Khor and Duhail.
When contacted recently, a
pharmaceutical company operator said they could consider
launching a 24-hour pharmacy
in the Industrial Area.
“I think there is a need for a
24-hour pharmacy in the Industrial Area as it is perhaps
the only place in the country
that remains awake through
the night,” he said.
However, in view of strict
procedures (for opening a
new outlet), one needs to
wait for at least six-seven
months for the mandatory
formalities to be completed,
he pointed out.
Doctors advise steps to prevent conjunctivitis
By Joseph Varghese
Staff Reporter
D
octors have advised
residents to take adequate
precaution
against conjunctivitis (eye infection) which is still common
in Qatar. Though the number of
cases have reduced, compared
to the peak summer months,
many patients are still seeking
medical care, of late.
Though not involving a high
risk, conjunctivitis is a highly
contagious disease that brings
along with it a number of inconveniences for those affected. Doctors suggest that people
must keep away from those
suffering from the disease to
avoid the risk of contracting
it. The patients must isolate
themselves from their family members and friends during
illness.
Dr Zaira K S, ophthalmologist, Aster Medical Centre, said
that the disease continues to
affect people as the population
is made up mostly of expatriates. “The population is mostly
expatriates and they come
from different parts of the
world from different climatic
conditions. Moreover, many
of them have returned after
the holidays and might have
carried the germs from their
home countries. This must be
the reason why it continues to
affect several people.”
The ophthalmologist recalled there was an outbreak of
the disease some two months
back and it has subsided now.
“Though less in number, still
we come across patients with
conjunctivitis, which might be
due to the return of many expa-
triates from any of the regions
affected with the disease.”
Dr Zaira added that the
best effective way to prevent
conjunctivitis is not rubbing
the eyes with infected hands.
“There are many medicines
for different types of conjunctivitis. Isolating the affected
person and washing hands frequently will help to limit the
spread of the disease.”
Dr Abdulla Shahada, of Primary Health Care Corporation, said that there are several
types of conjunctivitis which
are common. “Major types of
the disease are viral conjunctivitis and the one caused by
bacteria. It can also happen
through allergy and the use of
any irritants. The viral one is
accompanied by sore throats,
sneezing and cold.”
“Conjunctivitis caused by
some bacteria and viruses
can spread easily from person
to person, but is not a serious health risk if diagnosed
promptly. The best way to treat
the disease is to isolate the person from others and provide
immediate medication for the
affected.”
taking from the right, which
could cause traffic accidents
and fatalities. He recommended that steps be taken to raise
awareness on this violation and
advised people to go for work
early instead of leaving home
late and trying to reach office
on time by driving at a high
speed and committing traffic
violations, the report further
states.
Some citizens, meanwhile,
said slow driving in fast lanes
hampers the traffic ﬂow and
leads to accidents, the report
adds.
‘Oil price
fall not
to affect
growth
plan’
A fall in oil prices will not affect
development efforts in Qatar, local
daily Arrayah has reported, quoting
HE Dr Saleh Mohamed Saleh alNabit, the Minister of Development
Planning and Statistics.
He said changes in oil prices take
place from time to time and these
are expected. For this reason, he
added, Qatar implemented the
basic principle of sustainability
when it devised the development
plan and that Qatar’s vision for
the future would not be affected
by such temporary changes, the
report stated.
Qatar focuses on the sustainability
of development and the plan can
be implemented no matter what
the circumstances are, the minister
said.
Speaking at a press conference on
the sidelines of a workshop held by
the ministry, he said any economic
development has environmental
repercussions and the most
important aspect in this regard
is to limit the negative impact
accelerated economic growth may
have on the environment.
The minister stressed that there
is constant coordination between
his ministry and other ministries
through joint committees, the
report added.
Rush for booking
of camping sites
The first day of registration for
camping witnessed a rush to
reserve camping sites at popular
locations such as Sealine and
Khor al-Adaid, local daily Arrayah
has reported.
Citizens, meanwhile, have called
for finding solutions to problems
such as the absence of services in
the camping areas and increasing
the number of garbage bins to
improve cleanliness standards at
the camps, the report stated.
They have also pointed out that
48 hours is too short a time to
remove camps, urging that this be
increased to a week.
Conference on
Arab-German ties
The International and Arab
Relations Forum at Katara - the
Cultural Village will organise a
conference on “Arab-German
relationships” on January 14 and 15.
It will see the participation of a
number of academicians, political
experts and leaders from the
Arab and Muslim community in
Germany.
The conference will handle ArabGerman relationships at all levels.
It will be conducted in Arabic with
simultaneous interpretation in
German and English.
Gulf Times
Saturday, October 18, 2014
3
REGION/ARAB WORLD
Sharp increase in number of migrants drowning
AFP
Geneva
S
cores have drowned in the
Red Sea in recent weeks
trying to cross to Yemen
making this year’s death toll the
highest in years, the UN’s refugee agency said yesterday.
“There’s been a sharp increase
this year in the number of migrants and asylum seekers losing their lives in attempts to get
to Yemen, mainly from the Horn
of Africa, with more deaths in
2014 than in the last three years
combined,” UNHCR spokesman
William Spindler told reporters.
Thousands of people ﬂeeing
lawless Somalia and the ironﬁsted regime in Eritrea, among
other troubled countries, try to
reach Yemen in the hope of making their way on to Saudi Arabia
and the Gulf.
In the latest incident, 64 migrants and three crew died on
October 2 when their vessel sank
in the Gulf of Aden after leaving
Somalia, he said.
“With ﬁve additional deaths
since, this brings the number of
dead this year to 215, exceeding
the combined total for 2011, 2012
and 2013,” he said.
Spindler said smuggling rings
using overloaded vessels were
increasingly getting more ruthless, throwing passengers overboard to avoid detection or capsize.
The October 2 tragedy marked
the deadliest sinking since June,
when 62 people died. Forty-four
people perished in March in another incident, while another in
April claimed 12 lives.
Spindler said that the latest
deaths came against the background of a dramatic increase in
the number of new arrivals for
September off Yemen’s coast.
At 12,768, it was the single
biggest month for arrivals since
current record-keeping began in
2002.
“There have been frequent
reports of mistreatment, abuse,
rape and torture and the increasingly cruel measures being adopted by smuggling rings
seem to account for the increase
in deaths at sea,” said Spindler.
“Search-and-rescue officials
say the practice has resulted
in hundreds of undocumented
casualties in recent years,” he
added.
Similar stories have emerged
from the far more travelled Mediterranean route, where more
than 3,000 migrants have died
trying to reach Europe this year
alone, according to the International Organisation for Migration.
Among the migrants who
cross the Red Sea and manage to
reach Yemen, many get stuck at
the Saudi border, unable to cross.
Yemen is the only country in
the Arabian Peninsula that is
signatory to two international
accords dating back to 1951 and
1967 governing the protection of
refugees.
It currently hosts 246,000
refugees, of whom over 230,000
are from Somalia and a smaller
number from Ethiopia, Eritrea,
Iraq and Syria, according to UNHCR ﬁgures.
In addition to the foreign refugees, more than 334,000 Yemenis have been displaced within
their country by conﬂict.
UNHCR and its partners are
working ﬂat out with Yemeni authorities to help care for boat people who make it to the country,
“We also call on countries of
origin, transit and destination
in the region to step up their cooperation in managing the ﬂows
of migration,” Spindler said.
“At the same time they must
pay due attention to the protection needs of refugees, asylum
seekers and other vulnerable
groups such as women and minors,” he added.
20 killed as
Yemen Shia
rebels clash
with tribes
Rival groups are seeking to
exploit a power vacuum in
Yemen, which has been in
political deadlock since the
rebels took control of Sanaa
on September 21
AFP
Sanaa
S
hia rebels sweeping across
Yemen clashed with Sunni
tribesmen yesterday in violence that left 20 people dead, ofﬁcials said.
Twelve Shia rebels and eight
tribesmen died in a battle for control of the predominantly-Sunni
provincial capital Ibb which the
rebels overran earlier this week,
local government officials said.
Explosions were heard across
the city as the rebels, known as
Houthis, came under rocket-propelled grenade ﬁre from tribesmen in the surrounding countryside, witnesses said.
The ﬁghting came after hundreds of armed tribesmen demonstrated outside the governor’s
office in the city on Thursday
evening demanding the withdrawal of the rebels.
Ibb governor Yehya al-Iryani
urged “armed groups from all
sides to leave the province and end
violence”, in a statement on the
official Saba news agency.
He warned that if armed groups
remained in Ibb, authorities “will,
under the orders of President
Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi... take
all necessary measures to restore
security and stability”.
However, the rebels who have
so far captured several provinces
and cities across Yemen, including the capital, have met with little or no resistance amid an almost
complete absence of government
forces.
Deputy governor Ali al-Zanam
said the rebels had told him they
advanced into Ibb to “confront
what they described as security
gaps”, local media reported.
The rebels clashed with Al Qaeda militants on Thursday night in
Rada, in Baida province further
east, leaving “dozens” of casualties, tribal and security sources
said.
Houthis have clashed repeatedly in the province since Tuesday
with Al Qaeda militants, who have
vowed to resist the Shia rebel advance.
But tribal, security and military sources said the Houthi
rebels met with no further resistance from Al Qaeda as they
captured Rada yesterday and deployed their armoured vehicles
across the city, home to a mix of
Sunnis and Shias.
The Houthis’ vehicles carried
banners reading Iran’s Islamic
revolutionary slogan: “Death to
America! Death to Israel!”, residents said.
Authorities in Yemen have repeatedly accused Tehran of backing the Shia rebellion.
Rival groups are seeking to exploit a power vacuum in impoverished Yemen, which has been in
political deadlock since the rebels
took control of Sanaa on September 21.
The rebels, who were previously based in the northern high-
lands where Yemen’s Zaidi Shia
minority is concentrated, have
since made signiﬁcant advances
in provinces south of Sanaa.
They took the Sunni majority Red Sea port city of Hudeida
on Monday, and on Wednesday
advanced on to Zaidi-populated
Dhamar, as well as Ibb.
The steady expansion of the
rebels has increased the threat of
an open confrontation with Al
Qaeda.
Al Qaeda claimed responsibility for a powerful suicide bombing
that killed 47 people at a gathering of Houthi supporters in Sanaa
earlier this month.
The Houthi rebels set up armed
protest camps in Sanaa in August,
calling for the government to step
down and demanding more power
in state institutions.
Late on Thursday, they began
dismantling their protest camps
in Sanaa.
Protest organisers said in a
statement the move was aimed at
implementing the terms of a UNbrokered ceaseﬁre agreement.
On Monday, Hadi named Yemen’s envoy to the United Nations,
Khalid Bahah, as his new premier,
a nomination the rebels appeared
to approve.
Hadi yesterday discussed the
situation in his country with US
President Barack Obama on the
telephone, Saba reported.
Meanwhile, in the main
southern city of Aden, troops
shot and wounded seven supporters of the separatist Southern Movement as they marched
towards an army camp, medics
and witnesses said.
Palestinians shouting slogans during a rally in Gaza City yesterday to protest after Israeli authorities restricted access to the Al Aqsa
mosque compound.
Abbas tells Palestinians to
protect Aqsa by ‘all means’
AFP
Ramallah
P
alestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas yesterday
called on his people to
prevent Israeli settlers from
entering Jerusalem’s ﬂashpoint
Al Aqsa mosque and use “all
means” to protect the site.
His comments came days after Israeli police clashed with
Palestinian protesters demonstrating against Jews visiting
the Al Aqsa mosque compound,
Islam’s third holiest site but
which is also revered by Jews.
“It is not enough to say the
settlers came, but they must be
barred from entering the compound by any means. This is our
Aqsa... and they have no right
Harley rally
to enter it and desecrate it,” Abbas said.
The Palestinian president
was speaking at a conference in
the West Bank town of Ramallah after a spate of clashes this
week since a Monday confrontation between Palestinian
youths and Israeli police.
Abbas insisted that defending Al Aqsa was tantamount to
defending Jerusalem, which the
Palestinians are demanding as
the capital of their future state.
“Jerusalem is the jewel in
the crown and it is the eternal
capital of the Palestinian state.
Without it, there will not be a
state,” he said.
“It is important for the Palestinians to be united in order
to protect Jerusalem,” he added.
Earlier yesterday, hundreds
The site is the scene of frequent tensions.
It is revered by Jews, who call
it the Temple Mount, as the
location of the biblical Jewish
temples and considered Judaism’s holiest place.
Non-Muslim visits to the
Al Aqsa complex are permitted and regulated by police, but
Jews are not allowed to pray at
the site for fear it could trigger
major disturbances.
Jews pray instead at the
Western Wall below.
Muslims fear Jewish presence
on Al Aqsa is aimed at usurping
the site.
On Monday, Israeli Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
reiterated that “Israel is committed to maintaining the status quo” there.
Iran guards, Pakistan
officer die in shooting
AFP
Tehran
T
Harley Davidson motorcycle riders taking part in a rally drive their bikes outside Manama yesterday. Some 400 Harley Davidson
Owner Group (HOG) riders, including some from Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the UAE, joined riders from Bahrain in the 1st
Bahrain HOG Rally.
of Palestinians took to the
streets of Gaza in a rally for Al
Aqsa organised by Hamas.
Leaving
mosques
after
prayers in Gaza City, they
chanted slogans pledging to
defend the mosque and waved
green ﬂags, the colour of the
Islamist movement that is de
facto ruler of Gaza.
The rally was also attended
by other Palestinian factions,
including Islamic Jihad.
Ismail Radwan, a Hamas
leader, called on “our people in
Jerusalem and the West Bank to
defend Al Aqsa”.
In Jerusalem, the weekly Friday prayers at Al Aqsa mosque
passed without incident after
Israeli police barred entry to
Palestinian men under the age
of 50 to prevent disturbances.
wo Iranian border guards
and a Pakistani paramilitary officer were killed in
a shooting incident, sources on
the two sides said yesterday, as
Tehran said rebels tried to infiltrate the country.
“Several rebels” also died in
the fighting on Thursday night,
Iranian news agency Isna quoted a military official as saying,
adding that a car and weapons
were seized.
Meanwhile, an official in Pakistan said a paramilitary officer was killed and four soldiers
wounded when their vehicle
came under fire by Iranian border guards.
“The FC (Frontier Corps) patrol was chasing two suspects
in a car when the Iranian border guards opened fire from
across the border, killing one
junior commissioned officer
and wounding four soldiers,”
spokesman Wasey Khan said.
The home secretary of Pakistan’s Baluchistan province,
Akbar Hussain Durrani, confirmed the incident and the
casualties.
It was not clear if the car being pursued by the Pakistanis
was the same one seized after
the shooting incident across
the border.
Baluchistan is adjacent to the
Iranian province of Sistan-Baluchistan, where Isna said the
shooting occurred and where
rebel attacks earlier this month
killed five people, four of them
security forces.
Iranian media said 14 people
were arrested in connection
with those attacks.
Last month an Iranian soldier
was killed and two pro-government militiamen wounded in
an attack blamed on the Sunni
group Jaish-ul Adl (Army of
Justice).
The same group captured five
Iranian soldiers in February,
four of whom were released in
April. The fate of the fifth man
remains unknown.
Sistan-Baluchistan province
has a large Sunni Muslim community in an otherwise predominantly Shia country, and
has been plagued by violence
involving extremists and drug
smugglers.
Iran has repeatedly asked
Pakistan to act to “stop the infiltration of terrorists” and has
tasked the elite Revolutionary
Guards to monitor the restive
border region.
Pakistan’s
resource-rich
Baluchistan is home to a longrunning separatist conflict that
was revived in 2004, with nationalists seeking to stop what
they see as the exploitation of
the region’s natural resources
and alleged rights abuses.
The idea of giving greater autonomy to the province, the size
of Italy but with only 9mn inhabitants, is highly sensitive in
a country still scarred by the independence in 1971 of its eastern portion, now Bangladesh.
4
Gulf Times
Saturday, October 18, 2014
ARAB WORLD
Turkey calls for long ‘humanitarian’ safe zone
AFP
Ankara
T
urkish Prime Minister
Ahmet Davutoglu yesterday called for a “humanitarian” safe zone to be
created in an extensive section
of northern Syria to host refu-
gees fleeing the Syrian conflict.
Turkey has called for the area,
backed up by a no-ﬂy zone, to
protect its borders and provide
some protection for refugees
ﬂeeing both the Syrian conﬂict
and Islamic State militants who
have seized swathes of Iraq and
Syria.
Davutoglu said the safe zone
should be established on a long
stretch of territory along Turkey’s more than 900km border with Syria, from Idlib in the
west to Hasakah to the east and
including the besieged town of
Kobane.
“Safety zones can be established in areas which have seen
a ﬂow of refugees,” Davutoglu
told a brieﬁng in Ankara. “These
safe zones are humanitarian, not
military,” he said.
Asked about where the safe
zone should be, he mentioned
the main regions of northern
Syria but cautioned against
seeing it as a single continuous
area.
“Where did the refugees
come to Turkey from? Jarabulus,
Kobane, Tel Abyad, Idlib and Hasakah,” he said.
“But it’s not limited to these
cities. I tried to limit them to the
areas from which refugees come.”
Davutoglu dismissed maps
seen in newspapers which portrayed the security zone as a
continuous line stretching right
over 1.5mn Syrian refugees who
ﬂed the civil war between Syrian
President Bashar al-Assad and
rebels seeking his ouster.
Davutoglu did not make clear
if the safe zone should house just
refugees from the Kobane region
or also those who ﬂed from elsewhere in Syria earlier in the conﬂict.
along the Turkish border with
Syria.
“They haven’t been drawn by
us or based on any diplomatic
consultations,” he said.
Some 200,000 Kurds have ﬂed
to Turkey to escape the onslaught
on the key Syrian border town of
Kobane by IS militants.
Turkey is separately hosting
Islamic State
ﬂying three
jets in Syria,
says monitor
Reuters
Beirut
I
Smoke rises during clashes between Syrian Kurdish fighters and Islamic State militants in and around Kobane yesterday.
US planes, Iraq ground
forces ﬁght IS militants
AFP
Mursitpinar, Turkey
U
S-led warplanes pummelled Islamic State ﬁghters in Syria yesterday as
Iraqi forces fought the militants
west of Baghdad, with the US
military reiterating that Iraq is its
top priority.
As ﬁghting raged on several
fronts, Al Qaeda’s Yemen-based
franchise urged Muslims worldwide to support the IS group in
Syria and Iraq.
The US commander overseeing the air war hailed “encouraging” signs in the defence
of Kobane, but said the Syrian town on the Turkish border
could still fall to IS and insisted
that Iraq was the coalition’s top
focus.
“Iraq is our main effort and
it has to be, and the things that
we’re doing right now in Syria
are being done primarily to
shape the conditions in Iraq,”
said General Lloyd Austin.
Six US-led coalition air strikes
hit IS positions in the east of
Kobane yesterday, taking advantage of new co-ordination with
the town’s Kurdish defenders, the
Syrian Observatory for Human
Rights said.
The militant group has captured large parts of Syria and Iraq,
committing atrocities and declaring an Islamic “caliphate”.
In Iraq, security forces fought
IS on two fronts—the strategic
city of Ramadi, west of Baghdad,
and near Tikrit.
Ramadi, the capital of Anbar
province, is in a shrinking patch of
territory where pro-government
forces in the area still hold ground,
and its loss would be a major blow
for Baghdad.
Government forces launched an
offensive yesterday north of Tikrit,
one of a string of mainly Sunni Arab
towns north and west of Baghdad
that the militants seized in June.
Iraqi troops have been struggling to retake and hold ground,
despite the coalition air strikes.
Despite a string of car bombs
in the Iraqi capital, the US military said Baghdad was not under “imminent threat” from the
militants.
“There are not masses of formations of (IS) forces outside
of Baghdad about to come in,”
spokesman Rear Admiral John
Kirby said.
Three more car bombs hit
crowded areas of the capital yesterday, killing at least 23 people
and wounding more than 50, ofﬁcials said.
While the militants have been
kept from reaching Baghdad in
force and would face major challenges if they tried to occupy part
of the city, they are still able to
carry out bombings with impunity.
In Syria, meanwhile, Kobane
district chief Anwar Muslim said
US-led strikes had destroyed
many IS vehicles and artillery
pieces.
The Kurds claim to have
pushed IS back in parts of Kobane
as the coalition intensiﬁed its air
strikes in recent days, and Muslim said “our forces are reinforcing their defensive positions.”
But he said IS sniper and mortar ﬁre was preventing authorities
from evacuating civilians caught
up in the battle.
“Their situation is difficult,” he
added.
The Kurdish Democratic Union
Party (PYD), which spearheads
the defence of Kobane, has been
appealing urgently for weapons
to resupply its ﬁghters, but Washington said it was too early to discuss the request.
The PYD has close ties with the
rebel Kurdistan Workers Party—
which is on the US terror blacklist—over the border in Turkey.
Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, classiﬁed by the United
States as the network’s deadliest
franchise, urged Muslims yesterday not to participate in the battle
against IS.
“We urge all mujahedeen (Muslim ﬁghters) to set aside their
differences and inter-factional
ﬁghting and move instead against
the crusade targeting all” jihadists, it added.
The month-old IS assault on
the Kobane area has sparked an
exodus of some 200,000 mainly
Kurdish refugees across the border, where the town’s plight has
stoked nationalist sentiment
among Turkey’s own large Kurdish minority.
More than 180,000 people
have been killed in Syria since
an uprising against President
Bashar al-Assad’s regime began
in 2011, escalating into a civil
war.
At least 15 civilians, including
three minors, were killed in Syrian
regime air raids on a rebel-held
town near the capital yesterday,
the Observatory said.
raqi pilots who have joined
Islamic State in Syria are
training members of the
group to ﬂy in three captured
ﬁghter jets, a group monitoring
the war said yesterday, saying
it was the ﬁrst time the militant
group had taken to the air.
The group, which has seized
swathes of land in Syria and
Iraq, has been ﬂying the planes
over the captured Al Jarrah military airport east of Aleppo, said
Rami Abdel Rahman, who runs
the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
US Central Command said it
was not aware of Islamic State
ﬂying jets in Syria.
US-led forces are bombing
Islamic State bases in Syria and
Iraq. The group has regularly
used weaponry captured from
the Syrian and Iraqi armies and
has overrun several military
bases but, if the report is conﬁrmed, this would be the ﬁrst
time it has been able to pilot
warplanes.
“They have trainers, Iraqi ofﬁcers who were pilots before for
(former Iraqi president) Saddam
Hussain,” Abdel Rahman said.
“People saw the ﬂights, they
went up many times from the
airport and they are ﬂying in
the skies outside the airport and
coming back,” he said, citing
witnesses in northern Aleppo
province near the base, which is
70km south of the Turkish border.
Witnesses reported the ﬂights
were at a low altitude and only
lasted ﬁve to 10 minutes before
landing, the Observatory said.
It was not possible to reach the
Syrian government for comment
and state media did not mention
the report.
It was not clear whether the
jets were equipped with weaponry or whether the pilots
could ﬂy longer distances in the
planes, which witnesses said
appeared to be MiG 21 or MiG 23
models captured from the Syrian military.
“We’re not aware of ISIL conducting any ﬂight operations in
Syria or elsewhere,” US Central
Command spokesman Colonel Patrick Ryder said, using a
former name for Islamic State.
“We continue to keep a close
eye on (Islamic State) activity in
Syria and Iraq and will continue
to conduct strikes against their
equipment, facilities, ﬁghters
and centres of gravity, wherever
they may be.”
“People saw the flights, they
went up many times from
the airport and they are
flying in the skies outside
the airport and coming
back”
General Lloyd Austin, head of
the US military’s Central Command, said he could not conﬁrm
that Iraqi pilots had joined Islamic State.
“We don’t have any operational reporting of ISIL ﬂying
jets in support of ISIL activity
on the ground and so I cannot
conﬁrm that. And to the degree
that pilots may have defected
and joined the ranks of ISIL, I
don’t have any information on
that either,” he told a Pentagon
news brieﬁng.
Pro-Islamic State Twitter accounts have previously posted
pictures of captured jets in other
parts of Syria but the aircraft
appeared unusable, according to
political analysts and diplomats.
The countryside east of Aleppo city is one of the main bases
of Islamic State in Syria. The Al
Qaeda offshoot controls up to
a third of the territory of Syria,
whose civil war pitting various
rebel groups against the regime
of President Bashar al-Assad
has raged for more than three
years.
Israeli ministers denounce Kerry remarks on conﬂict
AFP
Jerusalem
T
wo senior Israeli government
ministers lashed out at US
Secretary of State John Kerry
yesterday over remarks he made
linking the Israeli-Palestinian conﬂict with the growth of Islamic extremism.
“I respect John Kerry and his efforts but he keeps breaking new
records in lack of understanding of
our region and the essence of our
disputes,” Communications Minister Gilad Erdan said in an interview
with Israeli public radio.
“I think that this time it is really a
new record,” he said.
Kerry, just back from a visit to
Egypt for a multilateral conference
on the reconstruction of Gaza, said
on Thursday that in conversations
he had heard that the unresolved
Israel-Palestinian conﬂict was fuelling recruitment for the Islamic
State militant group.
“There wasn’t a leader I met with
in the region who didn’t raise with
me spontaneously the need to try to
get peace between Israel and the Palestinians, because it was a cause of
recruitment and of street anger and
agitation,” Kerry said.
“People need to understand the
connection of that. And it has something to do with humiliation and denial and absence of dignity,” he added.
Erdan, a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud
party who holds a seat on the prestigious security cabinet, mocked the
idea that building in West Bank settlements, such as Maaleh Adumim
Soldier dies in Lebanon attack
AFP
Beirut
A
Lebanese soldier was
killed yesterday as
a military bus came
under ﬁre in the country’s
north, in the fourth such
deadly attack in less than a
month, the army said.
It named the soldier as
Jamal Jean Hashem, a teenager on the bus which was
transporting soldiers back
to their post in the Akkar
region of northern Lebanon.
On September 23, gunmen shot dead a soldier
in the nearby port city of
Tripoli, the frequent scene
of clashes between the army
and extremists.
And a homemade bomb
exploded in the city on October 7 killing another soldier,
while a colleague died in an
attack in the Akkar region
two days later by gunmen on
a motorbike.
“Terrorist groups are targeting the army to weaken it
and ... to force the army to
ease the pressure in the Arsal
region” of east Lebanon on
the border with Syria, a military source said.
Militants from the Islamic
State group and Al Qaeda’s
Syrian affiliate Al Nusra
Front fought deadly battles with Lebanese troops in
Arsal in August.
They withdrew after a
truce to mountains outside
the border town, but took
dozens of army and police
hostages with them as they
left. Three of them have
since been executed.
The extremists demand
the withdrawal from Syria
of ﬁghters from Hezbollah
and they accuse the army of
co-operating with the powerful Lebanese Shia militant
group.
near Jerusalem, was fanning the
ﬂames of jihad.
“’Absence of dignity’, is that
what’s causing the rise of Islamic
State?” he asked.
“Two hundred thousand people murdered in Syria, British and
Americans whose heads are being
cut off ... is all this because of settlement in Maaleh Adumim?”
Economy Minister Naftali Bennett,
who leads the far-right Jewish Home
party and also is in the security cabinet, said that the world sought to make
Israel a scapegoat for its troubles.
Gulf Times
Saturday, October 18, 2014
5
ARAB WORLD
18 killed as
clashes rage
in Benghazi
The Libyan Red Crescent calls
for a ceasefire, “even for one
hour”, to allow families to flee
the combat zone
AFP
Benghazi
F
ierce clashes raged in
Benghazi yesterday, killing
at least 18 people, on the
third day of an offensive by progovernment forces to recapture
Libya’s second city from Islamist
militias.
An AFP correspondent said
the latest fighting was the most
violent since forces of former
general Khalifa Haftar launched
the assault on Wednesday with
the backing of army units and
civilians who have taken up
arms.
Benghazi Medical Centre said
the 18 dead were mostly soldiers
and their civilian supporters in
the central district of Al Majouri.
There was no word on casualties on the side of the Islamists,
who rarely announce their losses.
In a statement on a pro-Haftar
television station, Al Karama, the
retired general said he was “satisﬁed with the results of the battle for Benghazi” and vowed that
“victory is near”.
At least 52 people have been
killed in the three days of what
Haftar has called an operation to
“liberate” Benghazi, according to
hospital ﬁgures.
Al Majouri is home to Mo-
hamed al-Zehawi, leader of
the Ansar al-Shariah militant
group, which the United States
has designated a terrorist organisation, and many of his
men.
Residents said the two sides
were using weapons of all calibres in street ﬁghting in a densely-populated district.
The Libyan Red Crescent
called on its Facebook page for a
ceaseﬁre, “even for one hour”, to
allow families to ﬂee the combat
zone.
Elsewhere, air raids struck
Islamist targets in the districts of Al Lithi, Al Massaken
and Bouatni, southeast of the
Mediterranean city, witnesses
said.
Islamist militias have seized
control of large parts of turmoilgripped Libya since a 2011 uprising against long-time leader
Muammar Gaddaﬁ.
The army has this time publicly thrown its weight behind
Haftar, who launched a ﬁrst,
unsuccessful, campaign against
the Islamists in Benghazi in May,
dubbing it “Operation Dignity”.
“The Libyan army claims
‘Operation Dignity’” as one of
its own campaigns,” spokesman
Colonel Ahmed al-Mesmari said
on Wednesday.
Before this week’s assault,
Haftar’s forces had been steadily beaten back to a ﬁnal redoubt
at Benghazi’s airport, which has
come under attack by Islamists
since mid-September.
Last week, more than 50
people were killed in fighting
between the rival sides, according to military and hospital sources.
In May, the authorities had
accused the former Gaddaﬁ-era
general—who spent years in exile
before returning to join the 2011
revolution—of trying to mount a
coup.
But the internationally recognised interim government
of Prime Minister Abdullah
al-Thinni “is now left with no
choice but to make things up
with Haftar”, said Libyan analyst
Fradj Najm.
Oil-rich and largely lawless
Libya has two competing governments as well as a host of rival
armed militias jostling for inﬂuence.
Parliament, elected in June, is
recognised by the international
community but contested by
the militia controlling most of
Tripoli and by the Islamists who
dominate Benghazi.
Thinni and the majority faction of that legislature decamped this summer to the far
eastern city of Tobruk because
of widespread insecurity, including in the capital, where a
rival administration has been
set up.
Clashes between rival militias
have driven an estimated 287,000
people from their homes, including 100,000 who have ﬂed the
outskirts of Tripoli, according to
the UN refugee agency.
Supporters of Rached Ghannouchi, leader of the Islamist Ennahda party, attend an electoral campaign rally in Jandouba, south west of Tunis, yesterday.
Ben Ali regime stalwarts
eye comeback in Tunisia
AFP
Tunis
T
hey became ﬁgures of
hate during the “Arab
Spring” revolution, but
stalwarts of Tunisia’s ousted
dictator Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali
are planning a political comeback in upcoming elections.
The polls, seen as a milestone
in the post-Ben Ali transition,
come nearly four years after the
self-immolation of a Tunisian
street vendor sparked protests
that spread around much of the
region.
Several parties headed by Ben
Ali sympathisers are ﬁelding
candidates for parliamentary
elections on October 26, and six
former regime officials are contesting a November 23 presidential poll.
They include Beji Caid Essebsi, an 87-year-old veteran Ben
Ali cadre who was parliamentary speaker in the early 1990s and
served as an interim premier after the 2011 revolution.
For many Tunisians like
Chokri Mizouri, the return of
the political establishment of
the Ben Ali years is a “provocation” for people who participated in the uprising.
Ben Ali-era officials “who
left through the back door are
climbing back in through the
window”, the 22-year-old student said.
“They should be ashamed
of themselves and should not
stand on the basis of their experience because their experience
is that of corruption and dictatorship,” he added.
“And it will be a catastrophe if
one of them becomes president
because it would restart the machine that we revolted against.”
Many of the Ben Ali sympathisers have spent the last few
years trying to play down their
role under the former leader,
who ruled for more than two
decades.
Former transport minister
Abderrahim Zouari was arrested
after the revolution and accused
of corruption, but later released
with no charge.
He admitted the previous
government made “many mistakes”.
“We know these mistakes,
and the statesman is someone
who recognises his faults and
makes up for them,” Zouari told
reporters, insisting he was now
determined to “move the country forward”.
Ex-foreign minister Kamel
Morjane apologised in 2011 “for
having accepted to serve” under
Ben Ali, and has downplayed his
responsibilities under the old
regime.
One-time health minister
Mondher Zenaidi ﬂed Tunisia
after the uprising, only returning last month to much fanfare
among supporters who gathered
at the airport to welcome him
home.
While many oppose their re-
turn, some Tunisians fed up with
the insecurity that has gripped
the country since the uprising
believe a former regime strongman could help restore stability.
“The Ben Ali regime was corrupt and oppressive but the
people could at least ﬁnd food to
eat,” said Karima Ben Hamida, a
graduate who has been unemployed for ﬁve years.
“Personally, between a presidential candidate from the troika (government) and the ‘azlem’
(members of Ben Ali’s inner circle), I would choose the latter.”
A law that would have excluded members of the former
regime from elections was rejected by an interim parliament
dominated by the Islamist Ennahda party, which has appealed
for reconciliation.
“We have seen for ourselves
the eradication policy in Iraqi
which has led to political exclusion there as well as in Libya,”
Ennahda leader Rached Ghannouchi said recently.
6
Gulf Times
Saturday, October 18, 2014
AFRICA
Senegal ‘Ebola-free’, UN
appeals for more money
AFP
Geneva
W
estern
countries
scrambled yesterday to
ward off a feared global
spread of Ebola amid fresh UN
appeals for funds to ﬁght the raging epidemic.
Despite the bleak outlook,
there was good news from Senegal, declared Ebola-free by
the World Health Organisation
(WHO) after the benchmark of
42 days passed without any new
cases.
But with Senegal’s single, nonfatal Ebola case a drop in an ocean
of 9,216 cases and 4,555 deaths
worldwide, international alarm
continued to spiral.
“We are losing the battle” due
to a lack of international solidarity, World Bank chief Jim Yong
Kim warned yesterday.
“Certain countries are only
worried about their own borders,” he said describing the situation as “very worrying”.
The epidemic, which began in
Guinea in December, has spun
out of control in west Africa and
the UN said its anti-Ebola war
chest was far from ﬁlled.
Secretary General Ban Kimoon said a call for donations
to a special UN trust fund had
barely been heeded, leaving the
world body with “a very serious
problem”.
Experts warn that the infection rate could hit 10,000 a week
by early December.
Despite $20mn of pledges,
there was only $100,000 in the
reserve fund – reportedly donated by Colombia – Ban told
reporters in New York.
An overall UN Ebola appeal for
$988mn had meanwhile garnered
$377mn, or 38% of the money
needed.
Another $217mn had been
pledged, said Jen Laerke, spokesman for the UN’s humanitarian
arm OCHA.
“But that’s not money in the
bank,” Laerke told reporters in
Geneva.
The top donors so far are the
World Bank, with $105mn, the
US, with $90mn, and the African
Development Bank, with $45mn,
he said.
Private donors have provided $34mn, while the European
Commission has paid in $10.5mn.
Ban praised the US, Britain and
France for their efforts, but urged
others to provide monetary and
logistical support.
“We need to turn pledges into
action. We need more doctors,
nurses, equipment, treatment
centres and medical evacuation
capacities,” he said.
The East African Community
bloc comprising Burundi, Kenya,
Rwanda, Uganda and Tanzania
announced it was sending over
600 health workers to the three
worst-hit countries: Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.
Ban’s predecessor as United Nations chief, Koﬁ Annan,
meanwhile accused wealthy
countries of dragging their feet
because the crisis began in Africa
(see sidebar).
A string of health workers have
been evacuated back to Europe
from Africa with Ebola, but the
only conﬁrmed case of transmission on the continent so far is
a Spanish nurse in Madrid who
cared for a missionary who died
after returning to Spain.
In the United States, two
nurses have now fallen ill, to the
Ebola neglected because it started in Africa, says Annan
Wealthy countries were slow to tackle the Ebola
epidemic as it began in Africa, former United Nations
secretary general Kofi Annan said in tough criticism of
the response to the crisis on Thursday.
“I am bitterly disappointed by the response ... I am disappointed in the international community for not moving faster,” Annan told the flagship BBC programme
Newsnight.
“If the crisis had hit some other region it probably
would have been handled very differently. In fact when
you look at the evolution of the crisis, the international
community really woke up when the disease got to
America and Europe.”
The Ghanaian diplomat, who led the United Nations for
a decade until 2006, said it should have been clear that
the spread of the virus from its epicentre in western
Africa to countries overseas was only a matter of time.
It has since been transmitted to a nurse in Spain and
two nurses in the United States who were treating
patients who had contracted the disease in Africa.
“I point the finger of blame at the governments with
capacity ... I think there’s enough blame to go around,”
Annan said. “The African countries in the region could
have done a bit more they could have asked for help
much faster and the international community could
have organised ourselves in a much better way to offer
assistance.”
“We didn’t need to take months to do what we are
doing today.”
Annan defended the World Health Organisation (WHO),
which has been criticised for not responding quickly
enough to the worst ever epidemic of the disease,
which began in Guinea before spreading to Liberia and
Sierra Leone.
The Nobel peace prize laureate said that the WHO,
which predicts that the infection rate could reach
embarrassment of health authorities, who faced questioning
about how the disease had spread
and why one nurse was allowed
to board a crowded ﬂight.
Both nurses were involved in
the care of a Liberian man, Thomas Eric Duncan, who died on
October 8.
It was the ﬁrst Ebola case diag-
Annan: If the crisis had hit some other region it
probably would have been handled differently.
10,000 a week by December, was aware of the risk of
the disease but relied on governments to give them the
resources to act.
“Countries are saturated with demands and they are
not always able to prioritise as effectively as they
should. I think we took our eyes off the ball,” Annan
said.
nosed in the US.
Western countries have also
scrambled to beef up airport security.
European Union health commissioner Tonio Borg said the
28-nation bloc would review exit
screening of travellers from Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone.
Senegal’s Ebola scare involved
a student who crossed from
Guinea shortly before the border
was shut on August 21, and was
diagnosed a week later.
Thanks to rapid care, he recovered by September 5, and returned to Guinea after two weeks.
“Senegal’s response is a good
example of what to do when
faced with an imported case of
Ebola,” WHO said, lauding the
government for having “reacted
quickly to stop the disease from
spreading”.
Senegal’s response included
identifying and monitoring 74
close contacts of the patient,
prompt testing of all suspected
cases, stepped-up surveillance
at border posts and nationwide
public awareness campaigns, the
UN agency underlined.
Experts agreed that tight surveillance would pay huge dividends.
“This shows that the virus can
be contained and the outbreak
controlled by contact tracing,
quarantine, good diagnostics and
barrier protection,” said David
Evans, professor of virology at
England’s University of Warwick.
“These control methods have
been successful in all previous
Ebola outbreaks.”
“However, the scale of the
current epidemic in West Africa makes the implementation
of these procedures much more
difficult, meaning that the virus
is likely to circulate there for several more months before being
controlled,” he warned.
Senegal could not be officially
cleared until two full 21-day Ebola incubation periods of the disease had elapsed.
Nigeria, where 20 people were
infected and eight died, is expected to be declared Ebola-free
on Monday. But neither is out of
danger.
The WHO is ramping up its efforts to help 15 African countries
defend themselves against the
virus – notably with measures
to better protect health workers,
who are paying a heavy price,
with 236 deaths out of 427 cases
across the affected countries.
N
igeria said yesterday that
it had agreed a ceaseﬁre
with Islamist militants
Boko Haram and reached a deal
for the release of more than 200
schoolgirls kidnapped by the
group six months ago.
There was no immediate conﬁrmation from the rebels, who
have wreaked ﬁve years of havoc
in Africa’s top oil producer and
triggered an international outcry by seizing the girls from the
northeast town of Chibok in
April.
“I wish to inform this audience
that a ceaseﬁre agreement has
been concluded,” said the head of
Nigeria’s military, Air Chief Marshal Alex Badeh, adding the deal
had followed three days of talks
with the militant sect.
Government spokesman Mike
Omeri said the deal covered the
release of the captives and Boko
Haram had given assurances
“that the schoolgirls and all other people in their captivity are all
alive and well”.
Their release would be a huge
boost for President Goodluck
Jonathan, who faces an election
next year and has been pilloried
at home and abroad for his slow
response to the kidnapping and
his inability to quell the violence,
the biggest security threat to Africa’s biggest economy.
Apart from one appearance
on a Boko Haram video, the girls
have not been seen since the brazen night-time raid on the town
near the Cameroon border, although police and a parent said
last month that one of the victims had been released.
Boko Haram, whose name
roughly translates as “Western
education is sinful”, has killed
thousands of people in its ﬁght
to create an Islamic caliphate in
the vast scrubland of Nigeria’s
impoverished northeast.
A senior Nigerian security
source conﬁrmed the existence
of talks, but said it remained
unclear whether Abuja was negotiating with self-proclaimed
movement leader Abubakar
Shekau, or another faction within the group.
“Commitment among parts
of Boko Haram and the military
does appear to be genuine. It is
worth taking seriously,” the security source told Reuters.
Several rounds of negotiations have been attempted in
recent years but they have never
achieved a peace deal, partly because the group is believed to be
deeply divided.
“There are some talks but it
depends on the buy-in of the
whole group. I would be surprised if Shekau had suddenly
changed his mind and is ready for
a ceaseﬁre,” the source added.
The government was negotiating with Danladi Ahmadu, a
man calling himself the secretary
general of Boko Haram, a presidency source said.
It was not clear if Ahmadu is
part of the same faction as Shekau.
Security sources in neighbouring Chad said Chadian mediators
had been involved in the discussions, which were part of a larger
deal that led to the release a week
ago of 27 hostages, including 10
Chinese workers, kidnapped in
Cameroon.
Separately, Cameroon’s defence ministry said eight soldiers
and 107 Boko Haram militants
had been killed in ﬁghting in
the far north on Wednesday and
Thursday, a region that has suffered regular cross-border raids.
Mugabe’s wife warns ‘successors’
Reuters/AFP
Marondera, Zimbabwe
P
resident Robert Mugabe’s
wife has accused senior ﬁgures in his ruling
ZANU-PF of dividing the party
by manoeuvring to replace the
90-year-old Zimbabwean leader, and called on them to let him
“ﬁnish his job”.
Mugabe has ruled the southern
African nation since independence from Britain in 1980, and
overwhelmingly won re-election
last year in a vote denounced by
his main rival, Morgan Tsvangirai, as a “huge fraud”.
Speculation is rife among both
supporters and opponents of
Mugabe that his health is failing
– something he denies, raising
worries about violent instability if he dies with the succession
battle in ZANU-PF unresolved.
The rise of Grace Mugabe, 49,
into the top ranks of ZANU-PF
has fed speculation she could be
angling to succeed her husband,
and she has been using a countrywide tour to denounce what
she called “the demon of factionalism” within the party.
“I told the President that if you
don’t dump that faction leader
we will dump her ourselves,”
Grace Mugabe said.
While not mentioning names,
many have interpreted her of-
ten cryptic attacks as directed
at Vice-President Joice Mujuru,
who is involved in an open tussle
with Justice Minister Emmerson
Mnangagwa to slide into Mugabe’s shoes.
Local media, including the
state-owned Herald newspaper,
were quick to name Mujuru as
the target of her wrath.
Grace Mugabe also criticised
private media for writing negative articles on her family, saying
her husband had been ordained
by God to lead and those jockeying to succeed him had no leadership qualities.
“Let’s leave our father to ﬁnish
his job and respect him,” she said
to cheers from the crowd.
More than 4,500 people have
died in the deadly Ebola outbreak
that began in west Africa at the
beginning of the year, fresh
World Health Organisation (WHO)
figures showed yesterday.
The UN health agency said that
4,555 people had died from
Ebola out of a total of 9,216 cases
registered in seven countries, as
of October 14.
A toll dated just two days earlier
had put the death toll at 4,493 out
of 8,997 cases.
Yesterday’s announcement came
as Western countries scramble to
ward off a feared global spread
of Ebola – one of the deadliest
viruses known to man.
The WHO splits the seven
affected countries into two
groups.
The first is comprised of Guinea,
Liberia and Sierra Leone – by far
the worst affected nations.
Liberia is the worst-hit of all, with
4,262 cases and 2,484 cases, as of
October 13.
Sierra Leone meanwhile counted
3,410 cases as of October 14,
1,200 of whom had died.
Guinea, where the epidemic
originated in December, had seen
1,519 cases and 862 deaths as of
October 14.
The second group counts
countries with far fewer cases,
including Senegal, which was
declared Ebola-free by the WHO
yesterday.
That declaration could be made
after the benchmark of 42 days
passed without any new cases
since Senegal’s single, non-fatal
Ebola case in August.
The second group also counts
Nigeria, which has seen 20 cases,
including eight deaths, and which
looks set to be declared Ebolafree next Monday.
In addition now, the second
group includes Spain, where a
nurse has been confirmed to
have contracted the disease
from a missionary she cared for
and who died from Ebola after
returning from Liberia.
And it counts the United States,
where two nurses have fallen ill
after caring for a Liberian man,
Thomas Eric Duncan, who died
on October 8 after becoming the
first Ebola case diagnosed in the
country.
Parliament in
Lesotho reopens
Nigeria reaches deal
to free abducted girls
Reuters
Abuja
Death toll soars to
4,555 out of 9,216
This May 15 file picture shows a student who escaped when Boko Haram rebels stormed a school and
abducted schoolgirls, identifying her schoolmates from a video released by the Islamist rebel group,
at the Government House in Maiduguri, Borno State. Nigeria’s government says it has reached a deal
for a ceasefire and the release of around 200 girls kidnapped six months ago from a school in the
northeast town of Chibok.
Lesotho’s King Letsie III reopened
parliament yesterday, the first
step in a peace deal aimed
at ending a crisis sparked by
military coup bid.
Prime Minister Tom Thabane
had suspended the body in June
fearing a vote of no-confidence.
The re-opening of parliament is
a key first step in a peace deal
following an August 30 coup
attempt and will lead to early
elections in February 2015.
On August 30 Thabane fled hours
before the military attacked
police installations.
Thabane returned accompanied
by SADC police and officials,
who have since hammered out
a peace deal among Lesotho’s
sparring factions.
Crucially, the opposition have
agreed not to mount a noconfidence vote against Thabane.
Instead, they allowed the
parliament to re-open and to
pass a budget, then officially
dissolve in order for the country
to prepare for early elections.
Jail Pistorius for 10 years: prosecution
AFP
Pretoria
O
scar Pistorius should be
jailed for at least 10 years
for killing his model
girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp, the
prosecution said yesterday as
the star sprinter’s sensational
trial approached its climax.
Slapping
down
defence
claims that the “broke and broken” Paralympic and Olympic
athlete had already suffered
enough, prosecutor Gerrie Nel
said that “the minimum that
society will be happy with is 10
years imprisonment”.
After hearing ﬁnal arguments
from both the defence and prosecution, Judge Thokozile Masipa scheduled sentencing for
Tuesday.
Defence lawyer Barry Roux
said Pistorius was not a “coldblooded killer” and should serve
a community-based sentence
similar to house arrest without
any time in South Africa’s tough
prisons.
The defence has suggested
that Pistorius’s punishment
could include cleaning a muse-
um for 16 hours a month.
Prosecutor Nel described the
suggestion as “shockingly disproportionate”.
“Go home, stay in a luxurious
house ... and he will not leave his
house except if he wants to train,
work, go to a doctor – that’s
what we do every day,” said Nel.
He said the “softly spoken
words” of Steenkamp’s cousin
Kim Martin, who pleaded with
the court to “make Mr Pistorius pay” for what he had done,
“trounces” any other testimony.
Pistorius, 27, admitted killing
Steenkamp by ﬁring four shots
through a locked toilet door in
his upmarket Pretoria home on
Valentine’s Day last year, but
said he believed she was an intruder.
The prosecution pressed hard
for a conviction for murder,
charging that Pistorius’s claim
was improbable and that he had
killed the photogenic 29-yearold law graduate after an argument.
But Judge Masipa acquitted him of murder – provoking
widespread controversy – and
found him guilty of culpable
homicide, for which he could
be sentenced to anything from a
ﬁne to 15 years in jail.
Pistorius wept in the dock
as his lawyer said he had already suffered enough for killing Steenkamp, describing the
double-amputee
sprinter’s
devastating fall from disabled
icon and sporting stardom to a
loathed criminal.
“He’s lost everything, he was
an icon in the eyes of South Africa,” said Roux in a last-ditch
bid to keep Pistorious out of jail.
Roux said Pistorius had also
lost the woman he loved, “most
of his friends” and “all of his
immovable properties”.
“He was denigrated to the extent that all that was left was a
rage killer, a cold-blooded killer,
and everything that was horrible,” said Roux, describing Pistorius as a “victim” of malicious
media attention.
The trial has been broadcast
live around the world, taking on
elements of both a soap opera
and a reality TV show.
Roux said that Pistorius was
genuinely remorseful for accidentally killing the woman he
loved and would suffer from this
for the rest of his life.
“The punishment of the accused immediately commenced
after the incident,” said Roux,
arguing the “trauma” Pistorius has suffered since shooting
Steenkamp is “far more severe
than any other criminal punishment”.
Pistorius has argued he is a
perfect candidate for house arrest because he is a ﬁrst-time
offender, needs specialised
physical and psychological care
that he cannot receive in prison,
and is tormented by remorse.
Prosecutor Nel questioned
why a man who had fought for
and won the right to compete
against able-bodied athletes
now argued that his disability
should play a signiﬁcant role in
his sentencing.
Acting correctional services
commissioner Zach Modise testiﬁed that South African prisons
are able to provide the specialised physical and psychological
care Pistorius needs for his rehabilitation.
Whatever sentence the athlete receives, his lucrative sporting career is forever tarnished,
with all of his major sponsors
cancelling his contracts.
Gulf Times
Saturday, October 18, 2014
7
AMERICAS
Obama names ‘Ebola czar’
AFP
Washington
Reuters/AFP
Washington
T
P
resident Barack Obama
has appointed a former
White House adviser as US
Ebola “czar” as the global death
toll from the disease that has hit
mostly three West African countries rose to more than 4,500.
Amid growing concerns about
the spread of the virus in the
United States, authorities said
a Texas health worker who may
have had contact with specimens
from an Ebola patient was quarantined on a cruise ship.
Obama, facing criticism from
some lawmakers over his administration’s handling of efforts to
contain the virus, appointed Ron
Klain, a lawyer who previously
served as chief of staff to VicePresident Joe Biden and former
vice-president Al Gore, to oversee the US response to the virus.
A White House official said the
longtime Democratic aide would
ensure that “efforts to protect
the American people by detecting, isolating and treating Ebola
patients in this country are properly integrated but don’t distract
from the aggressive commitment
to stopping Ebola at the source in
West Africa”.
Klain’s appointment and the
cruise ship incident highlighted
anxiety over the threat from Ebola even though there have been
just three cases diagnosed in the
country, all in Dallas, Texas.
They were a Liberian, Thomas
Eric Duncan, the ﬁrst person diagnosed in the country, and two
nurses who were among the team
of health workers caring for him
up to his death last week.
The worst-hit countries have
been Guinea, Liberia and Sierra
Leone, where Ebola has taken
4,546 lives since the outbreak
of the haemorrhagic fever began there in March, according
Scare at
Pentagon
Klain: newly appointed ‘Ebola czar’.
to a new report yesterday from
the World Health Organisation
(WHO).
Klain, the president of Case
Holdings and general counsel at
Revolution LLC, a technologyoriented venture capital ﬁrm
based in Washington, has been
asked to take on co-ordination
of the entire US government response to Ebola, reporting directly to Homeland Security
adviser Lisa Monaco and Susan
Rice, Obama’s national security
adviser.
The Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital worker aboard the
cruise ship, who did not have
direct contact with the nowdeceased Liberian patient, Duncan, but could have processed his
bodily ﬂuids, left on Sunday on a
cruise from Galveston, Texas.
The health worker has been
self-monitoring since October
6 and has not developed a fever
or other symptoms of Ebola, the
State Department said.
Carnival Cruise Lines said yesterday that it had been notiﬁed by
the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that a
passenger on the ship, the Carnival Magic, was a lab supervisor at
Texas Health Presbyterian.
Life sentence in
loud music murder
A Florida man who fatally shot a
black teen during an argument
over loud music was sentenced
yesterday to life in prison without
the possibility of parole.
Michael Dunn, a 47-year-old white
man, was convicted October 1 of
first-degree murder in the death
of Jordan Davis, 17, in November
2012.
The case has been widely
followed in the United States,
which has been rocked by a
series of racially tinged shooting
incidents in recent years.
At his trial, Dunn said he
approached a group of teens in
a sports utility vehicle and asked
them to turn down their music,
but they refused.
Dunn said he feared for his life
when one teenager started to get
out of the car and approach him.
Dunn pulled a pistol out of his
glove box and opened fire.
“To lose a child is a parent’s
worst nightmare,” Judge Russell
Healey said prior to sentencing,
according to the Florida TimesUnion. “Mr Dunn, your life is
effectively over. What is sad is
that this case seems to exemplify
that our society seems to have
lost its way.”
In addition to the life sentence,
Davis was also sentenced to 105
years for having shot at the three
other teenagers.
Prosecutors waived the death
penalty before trial.
It said she was deemed to be
“very low risk”.
The ship can carry 3,690 passengers and 1,367 crew, according
to the company’s website. Carnival is owned by Carnival Corporation.
The State Department said the
worker may have processed samples from Duncan 19 days ago.
The maximum incubation window for the disease is 21 days, according to the CDC. The worker
and a companion voluntarily isolated themselves in their cabin.
Illustrating the degree of public worry in the United States,
the Pentagon conﬁrmed an Ebola
scare yesterday in one of its parking lots when a woman who recently traveled to Africa vomited
after getting off a bus headed to
a high-level Marine Corps ceremony.
Officials said that they did
not know exactly where she had
traveled to in Africa or whether
she had a fever.
The Pentagon said that the
woman was rushed to a local
hospital.
Klain was appointed the day
after US lawmakers held a congressional hearing about the administration’s handling of Ebola,
Emergency vehicles are seen in a Pentagon parking lot after a woman who recently traveled to Africa
vomited there. The Pentagon confirmed an Ebola scare yesterday in one of its parking lots when the
woman vomited after getting off a bus headed to a high-level Marine Corps ceremony.
with some calling for a ban on
travel from West Africa, as other
politicians have in recent weeks.
Obama said he had no philosophical objection to a travel ban
but that some travelers might attempt to enter the United States
by avoiding screening measures,
which could lead to more Ebola
cases, not fewer.
On Thursday, he authorised
calling up military reservists
for the US ﬁght against Ebola in
West Africa.
The CDC has said it is expanding its search for people who
may have been exposed to Amber Vinson – one of the nurses
who treated the Ebola patient in
Texas – to include passengers on
a ﬂight she made to Cleveland,
Ohio in addition to those on her
Monday return trip to Texas.
Vinson went to Ohio at the
weekend on Frontier Airlines
while running a slight fever.
Dr Christopher Braden, a CDC
spokesman, said that Vinson may
have been ill as early as last Friday, when she boarded the ﬂight
from Dallas to Cleveland.
In Texas, Governor Rick Perry
said yesterday that health ofﬁcials were actively monitoring
eight air travelers who had close
contact with Vinson.
Lawrence Vinson, Amber Vinson’s uncle, told CNN that no
travel restrictions were imposed
on the nurses who treated Duncan and that his niece did not
believe she was putting anyone
in danger by boarding the plane
to Ohio.
He said his niece did not contact the CDC directly, but health
workers in Texas had checked in
with her in Ohio and made multiple calls to the CDC to get the goahead for her ﬂight back to Dallas
on Monday.
Dr Thomas Frieden, the CDC
director, has said it is unlikely
passengers who ﬂew with Vinson
were infected because the nurse
had not vomited or bled on the
ﬂight, but he said she should not
have boarded the plane.
The ﬁrst nurse to contract the
disease in the United States, Nina
Pham, was in fair and stable condition, US health officials said
yesterday.
Asked for his reaction to the
appointment of an “Ebola czar”,
Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute for Allergy and
Infectious Diseases, told reporters that he was focused on Pham,
who arrived at a specialised hospital outside Washington late on
Thursday.
“I don’t know exactly what is
meant by a czar, but we will certainly follow the lead of the president,” Fauci told reporters. “I
take care of patients and I do my
job. Other people do their job.”
he Pentagon closed off a
parking lot and one entrance yesterday as a
precaution after a woman, who
recently returned from Africa,
vomited outside the building,
prompting fears of Ebola.
Pentagon police officers at
9.10am local time (1310 GMT)
spotted a woman in a parking lot
“who was ill and vomiting”, the
Defence Department said in a
statement.
“During the response, the individual indicated that she had
recently visited Africa,” it said.
“Out of an abundance of caution, all pedestrian and vehicular
traffic was suspended around
the South Parking lot” and one
entrance to the sprawling office
building was also closed off, it
said.
An Arlington County Fire
Department team responded
quickly and within less than an
hour the woman was taken to a
local hospital in northern Virginia outside the US capital, it
said.
It was not clear what country
the woman had visited in Africa,
officials said.
A US defence official, who
spoke on condition of anonymity, said that the woman was on
a shuttle bus that was heading
to a ceremony at the US Marine
Corps barracks attended by top
brass and Defence Secretary
Chuck Hagel.
The event marked a change
of command for the head of the
Marine Corps.
Following the incident, the
passengers on the shuttle bus
have been kept isolated, officials
said.
The woman was believed to
be an employee for a contractor
that performs work for the Pentagon, the official said.
Fourth death linked
to Takata air bags
Reuters
Detroit/Orlando
A
fourth traffic death in a Honda
car has been linked to a defective
air bag made by Japanese supplier Takata Corporation, according to
a county medical examiner in Florida.
Hien Tran died on October 2, four
days after her red 2001 Honda Accord
sedan struck another car in Orlando
and the air bags exploded, sending
shrapnel at the 51-year-old woman, according to the Florida Highway Patrol
crash report and Orange-Osceola Chief
Medical Examiner Dr Jan Garavaglia.
Tran may have survived those injuries, the medical examiner said, but
she also suffered serious injuries to her
head which were not caused by the air
bag shrapnel.
Garavaglia said in an interview that
shrapnel came “tearing through” the
air bag and hit Tran, causing “stabtype wounds” and cutting her trachea.
“We connected the air bag to the
lacerations of the neck,” Garavaglia
told Reuters. “That contributed to her
death, but she has other trauma.”
Garavaglia said the “devastating”
neck injury suffered by Tran was not
typical for what is seen when an air bag
deploys in an accident.
Garavaglia’s office has not released
the ﬁnal autopsy report.
Emergency medical workers and
ﬁreﬁghters at the accident scene said
that Tran “had two or three deep cuts
on her right side of her neck that were
not consistent with crash injuries”, according to the crash report.
The report notes Tran was wearing
her seat belt and there were no broken
windows.
Honda spokesman Chris Martin said
the Japanese automaker just heard of
the accident on Thursday.
“We have not been formally notiﬁed,
and have not had an opportunity to
perform an inspection of the vehicle,”
he said. “Thus, it is too early to draw
any conclusions. We are now looking
into this crash.”
Takata’s US spokesman, Alby Berman, said the company was not aware
of the accident and would support
Honda’s investigation.
Officials with the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
(NHTSA) said they are in contact with
local authorities and Honda about the
accident and “will take appropriate action to protect consumers”.
Two of the fatal accidents previously
linked to Takata air bags occurred in
2009 and a third took place near Los
Angeles last year.
Canada trial sees graphic video of killing
Reuters
Montreal
A
graphic video showing the killing and dismemberment of a
Chinese student by a Canadian
man was shown in court on Thursday,
adding the suggestion of cannibalism
to what has become one of Canada’s
grisliest murder trials.
Canadian Luka Magnotta, 32, has
admitted to killing and dismembering
Jun Lin, videotaping the acts and mailing parts of the body to elementary
schools and to two Canadian political
parties.
He is pleading not guilty due to
mental illness.
Magnotta sat hunched over in court
as the jury watched a video that was
shot in his Montreal apartment. It
showed him stabbing, slashing and
performing sexual acts on a bloodied,
dismembered body.
The jury had been warned early on
in the trial about the disturbing video, which for more than 10 minutes
showed close-ups of body parts interspersed with images of Magnotta,
dressed in black, cutting a buttock
with a knife and fork and a black puppy
licking the dismembered torso.
Lin who had a sleeping pill and allergy medicine in his system, may have
died from blood loss when his neck was
cut, a pathologist testiﬁed at the trial
last week.
The pathologist said Lin was stabbed
55 times and then dismembered, but he
could not say whether the university
student was still alive when he was decapitated.
The prosecutor in the case says
Magnotta planned the killing for at
least six months before the crime was
committed, and that he had e-mailed
a British journalist in 2011 saying he
planned to kill a human being and videotape the act.
A Montreal police officer testiﬁed on
Thursday that she was asked in May
2012 to ﬁnd more information on the
video, which had been posted on several websites, including the popular
video-sharing site YouTube, under
the titles One Lunatic, One Icepick and
Time to Shake Things Up a Bit.
Police asked the website hosts to remove the videos and to share account
information about who had uploaded
them.
“We had the information that a
murder had taken place so we didn’t
want the video to circulate,” police
investigator Nadine Paoliello told the
court.
Paoliello said she contacted
YouTube parent company Google in
early June 2012.
She said Google agreed to take down
the video but would not reveal information about it, or about the user who
had uploaded it, without a warrant.
A publication ban imposed by the
court at a preliminary hearing has
barred media from reporting certain
details of the case.
Issued in Public Interest by
Gulf Times
Saturday, October 18, 2014
8
ASEAN
Indonesian election loser
urges unity in sign of thaw
AFP
Bangkok
AFP
Jakarta
A
I
ndonesia’s defeated presidential candidate yesterday
urged his supporters to back
winner Joko Widodo as the pair
met for the ﬁrst time since the
bitterly fought poll, signalling a
thaw that could help the incoming leader enact much-needed
reforms.
Ex-general Prabowo Subianto
congratulated Widodo, known
by his nickname Jokowi, and the
pair shook hands and embraced
after the meeting in the capital
Jakarta.
Widodo won a decisive victory over Prabowo in the July
election, which was the most
closely fought that the world’s
third-biggest democracy had
ever seen, and he is the country’s
ﬁrst leader without deep roots in
the era of dictator Suharto.
However Prabowo, who had
been seeking the presidency for
more than a decade, only grudgingly conceded defeat, and parties that backed him at the poll
have since been ﬂexing their
muscles in parliament, raising
fears that Widodo may not be
able to push through his reform
agenda.
Prabowo’s backers used their
parliamentary majority to win
key positions in the legislature
and voted to abolish the direct
election of local leaders, a measure Widodo had opposed and
which rolled back a key demo-
Thai man charged
with insulting
royals for graffiti
Indonesia’s losing presidential candidate Prabowo Subianto (left) gestures as he stands beside President-elect Joko Widodo after a meeting in
Jakarta yesterday.
cratic reform of the post-Suharto era.
But after much criticism of his
behaviour, the ex-general met
Widodo yesterday, and the pair
appeared smiling at a press conference afterwards.
“During a meeting that was
full of friendship, I congratulated him,” said the ex-general, who
has a chequered human rights
record and used to be married to
one of Suharto’s daughters.
“I conveyed to the party that I
lead, my friends and supporters,
to back Jokowi and his government.”
However, he added: “If there’s
some things which are not for
the beneﬁt of our nation and
people, we will not hesitate to
criticise.”
Widodo responded: “Our
goals are the same.. everything is
for the sake of the nation.”
He also welcomed Prabowo’s
willingness to criticise policies
he disagreed with: “A balance
in the management of the country is very important. There are
some who execute, some who
control, and some who criticise.
I see that as a good thing.”
There has been speculation
about whether Prabowo will attend Widodo’s inauguration on
Monday and the ex-general said
he would try his best to be there,
if he could make it back from an
overseas trip on time.
Bovine beauty
67-year-old Thai man
has been charged with
insulting the monarchy after scribbling anti-royal
comments on public toilet
walls, an official said yesterday, the latest charge under
the controversial lese majeste
law.
Thailand’s revered King
Bhumibol Adulyadej, 86, is
protected by tough royal defamation rules under which
anyone convicted of insulting
the king, queen, heir or regent
faces up to 15 years in prison on
each count.
Opas Charnsooksai was
arrested by the military in
a shopping mall in eastern
Bangkok Wednesday for writing anti-monarchy messages
in the public toilets, army ofﬁcer Burin Thongprapai said.
“Security guards at the mall
discovered he had written insulting comments on walls in
the restroom... He confessed
to the charge of lese majeste,”
he said, adding they had obtained CCTV evidence against
Opas. The accused will now
be tried in a military court
-- with no right to appeal -under martial law, which was
imposed by the army two days
before it seized power in May’s
coup.
Burin added that a raid on
Opas’ house revealed “symbols” of the opposition Red
Shirt movement.
Last month rights group
Amnesty International said
there had been an “unprecedented” number of people
charged with insulting the
Thai monarchy since the coup.
In August a 28-year-old
musician was sentenced to 15
years in jail for writing insulting Facebook posts about the
monarchy between 2010 and
2011.
“Security guards at the
mall discovered he
had written insulting
comments on walls
in the restroom...”
In another recent case a taxi
driver was jailed for two and a
half years after his passenger
-- a university lecturer who
recorded their conversation
on a mobile phone -- accused
him of expressing anti-royal
views, Amnesty said.
Since seizing power Thailand’s junta chief Prayut
Chan-O-Cha, who in August
was also appointed as premier,
has made several warnings
that his regime will not tolerate any criticism of the royal
family.
Critics say the legislation
has been politicised, noting
that many of those charged
were linked to the Red Shirts,
who are broadly supportive of
fugitive former premier Thaksin Shinawatra.
Thaksin, the older brother of ousted prime minister
Yingluck Shinawatra, was
toppled in a previous coup in
2006 and lives in self-exile
to avoid prison for a corruption conviction. Thailand’s
long-running political conﬂict
broadly pits a Bangkok-based
middle class and royalist elite,
backed by parts of the military
and judiciary, against rural and
working-class voters loyal to
Thaksin.
Former Myanmar
religion minister
jailed for 13 years
Reuters
Yangon
A
A winning cow is crowned during Miss Milk Cow annual beauty contest in Moc Chau plateau, 200 km northwest of Hanoi. The beauty contest selects cows with a solid torso,
high legs and which provide the most milk. This year, 126 cows have been chosen for contest among the 16,000 cows in Moc Chau. For more than a decade the Miss Milk
Cow beauty contest is organised in Moc Chau plateau to promote dairy farming as Vietnamese people’s eating pattern has been changing rapidly along with higher income.
former minister of religious affairs in Myanmar was sentenced to
13 years in prison yesterday on
charges of misappropriation of
state funds and sedition, his
lawyer said.
Hsan Hsint, who was
sacked on June 19, was handed a 10-year prison term and
100,000 kyat ($100) fine for
sedition, lawyer Tin Tun told
Reuters, and an additional
three-year sentence for a
charge of siphoning off state
funds worth $10,000.
Tin Tun said prosecutors
failed to provide concrete evidence of Hsan Hsint’s guilt.
“The allegations are not quite
clear,” he said, adding that he
would appeal against the rul-
ing at the Mandalay Division
high court next week.
No information on the case
was available from the judiciary.
Hsan Hsint’s dismissal followed a police raid on a Buddhist monastery involved in a
property dispute. Five monks
were arrested during the raid,
which caused a public outcry.
Thousands of prisoners
were granted amnesty by the
Myanmar government last
week though only three were
political detainees.
Rights groups said the
move seemed aimed at improving Myanmar’s image
before it hosts a summit
next month of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) that world
leaders including US President Barack Obama are due
to attend.
TERROR
Malaysia seeks SE
Asian co-operation
over IS threat
Malaysia’s defence minister
has labelled efforts by a US-led
coalition to push back the Islamic
State group in Iraq and Syria “ineffective”, and called for regional
co-operation to prevent jihadists
gaining a foothold in Southeast
Asia. “Air strikes by the US and its
allies (against IS in Syria and Iraq)
appear to be ineffective for now.
So, we need to consider our own
approach,” Hishammuddin Hussein was quoted as saying in The
Star newspaper. “We cannot work
in isolation. We need to work with
our friends and our neighbours,”
he said, speaking Thursday.
Citing neighbours Indonesia - the
world’s most populous Muslim
nation - the Philippines and Brunei,
Hishammuddin said the region
needed more intelligence-sharing
and other cooperation on the
IS threat. Hishammuddin also
lamented hesitation in the Arab
world in condemning the group.
“The silence from Arab states is
quite deafening when it comes
to the IS issue,” he said. Concern
is growing in Southeast Asia over
the potential for the Islamic State
to gain followers in the region.
Khmer Rouge leader says conviction a ‘fairy tale’
AFP
Phnom Penh
A
former Khmer Rouge
leader branded his conviction for crimes against
humanity a “child’s fairy tale”
at a UN-backed court in Cambodia yesterday, as he faced further charges of genocide, forced
marriage and rape.
Nuon Chea, 88, known as
“Brother Number Two”, has
already been given a life sentence along with ex-head of
state Khieu Samphan, 83, after a
separate trial at the same court
in August for crimes against humanity.
That ruling saw them become the ﬁrst top ﬁgures to be
jailed from a regime responsible
for the deaths of up to twomn
Cambodians from 1975-1979.
At his genocide trial yesterday, Nuon Chea spoke in court
for the ﬁrst time since the convictions to accuse judges of ignoring his evidence in August.
“You presented a story that
This handout photo taken and released by the Extraordinary
Chamber in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) yesterday shows former
Khmer Rouge leader ”Brother Number Two” Nuon Chea (centre)
sitting in the ECCC courtroom in Phnom Penh.
was simple but ultimately just
a child’s fairy tale... you made
a bitterly disappointing mockery of justice,” he said, reading a
statement from the dock.
The ex-leader also called for
the judges to be disqualiﬁed and
his defence team to boycott further hearings until a decision on
the subject is made.
The complex case against
Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan
was split into a series of smaller
trials in 2011 to get a faster verdict given the vast number of
accusations and their advanced
age.
Both men have appealed their
August convictions, which followed a two-year trial focused
on the forced evacuation of
around 2mn Cambodians from
Phnom Penh into rural labour
camps and murders at one exe-
cution site. Khieu Samphan also
made a statement to the court
Friday, claiming his right to a
fair trial had been violated.
“I know in advance that you
will ﬁnd me guilty and you will
convict me eventually even with
the current trial,” he said.
As prosecutors made their
opening statements in the trial,
which opened in July, around
300 regime survivors protested
outside court, holding placards
demanding monetary compensation for their suffering - there
are no individual ﬁnancial reparations under the court’s rules.
The second trial, broader in
scope than the ﬁrst, is viewed as
an opportunity for many other
victims of the regime to seek
redress.
“The accused will now face
trial for the biggest crimes for
which they have been indicted,”
said prosecutor Chea Leang.
Laying out the charges, coprosecutor Nicholas Koumjian
told the court the ex-leaders
committed the alleged crimes
“systematically... to maintain
their own power”. The testimony by the prosecution’s ﬁrst
witness, originally scheduled
for Monday, has been postponed until October 27.
The mass killings of an estimated 100,000 to 500,000 ethnic Cham Muslims and 20,000
Vietnamese form the basis of
the genocide charges against
the pair.
Before these charges were
ﬁled, the treatment of the minority Muslim group and Vietnamese community was rarely
discussed. “The ways in which
the Khmer Rouge mistreated
us is too heinous to describe
in words. Their goal was to exterminate our race,” said Seth
Maly, a 64-year-old Cham labour camp survivor who lost
100 of her relatives -- including
her two daughters, parents and
ﬁve siblings.
Nuon Chea and Khieu Samphan also face charges of
crimes against humanity and
war crimes in the second trial
- for the deaths of up to twomn
Cambodians through starva-
tion, overwork or execution
during the communist regime.
Most of these deaths do not
fall under the charge of genocide, which is deﬁned by the UN
as “acts committed with intent
to destroy, in whole or in part, a
national, ethnic, racial or religious group”.
“Without a second trial,
there would be an enormous gap
in the legal record about crimes
that deﬁned the experience of and still traumatise -- regime
survivors,” said Anne Heindel,
an adviser to the Documentation Center of Cambodia which
researches the country’s bloody
history.
Led by “Brother Number
One” Pol Pot, who died in 1998,
the Khmer Rouge dismantled
Cambodian society in a bid to
create an agrarian utopia.
The hearings will also provide
the ﬁrst forum for justice for
tens of thousands of husbands
and wives forced to marry, often
in mass ceremonies, as part of a
Khmer Rouge plan to boost the
population.
Gulf Times
Saturday, October 18, 2014
9
AUSTRALASIA/EAST ASIA
MARITIME
GRAFT
TENSION
JUSTICE
PEOPLE
Beijing, Vietnam pledge
to ‘control’ disputes
High-speed rail designer gets
suspended death sentence
Pyongyang accuses South of
undermining peace efforts
Taiwan tycoon detained
over food safety scandal
Kim makes second walking
stick-aided appearance
China and Vietnam have agreed to “address and
control” maritime disputes, state media said yesterday, as differences over the potentially energy-rich
South China Sea have roiled relations between the
two countries and other neighbours. Ties between
the countries sank to a three-decade low this year
after China deployed a $1bn-oil rig to the disputed
waters. The two countries should “properly address
and control maritime differences” to create favourable conditions for bilateral cooperation, Chinese
Premier Li Keqiang told Vietnamese Prime Minister
Nguyen Tan Dung on Thursday on the sidelines of
the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) in Milan.
The rail engineer credited with designing China’s
high-speed rail network received a suspended
death sentence after a Beijing court found him
guilty of taking 47.6mn yuan ($7.8mn) in bribes,
Chinese state media reported yesterday. Zhang
Shuguang, former deputy chief engineer and
transportation bureau head of China’s nowdefunct Ministry of Railways, was charged in
September of last year for accepting bribes
mostly from private Chinese firms vying to win
contracts over an 11-year period. Zhang was
given a death sentence suspended for two
years, the official Xinhua news agency said.
North Korea has accused the South of deliberately undermining efforts to reduce military tensions
and warned that prospects for the resumption
of a high-level dialogue between the two rivals
are “gloomy”. In a lengthy, 1,500-word despatch
late Thursday, that condemned the South for its
“persecution mania”, hypocrisy and arrogance,
the North’s official KCNA news agency offered its
version of secretive military talks on Wednesday
that ended in stalemate. The talks were meant
to address tensions arising from two incidents
involving brief live-fire exchanges on the interKorean land and maritime borders.
A Taiwanese tycoon was taken into custody
yesterday after his company was implicated in
a food safety scandal that resulted in a massive
product recall. Wei Ying-chung, ex-chairman of Wei
Chuan Foods Corp, a unit of food giant Ting Hsin
International Group, was detained on suspicions
of fraud and food safety violations on the grounds
that he could collude with other witnesses or destroy evidence, a court statement said. Wei Chuan
was accused of selling oil intended for animal food,
which is banned for human use, as regular lard
and cooking oil in the latest food safety scare that
has gripped Taiwan and triggered public outrage.
North Korea’s state media yesterday reported another public appearance by leader Kim Jong-Un, his
second in four days after an extended absence that
has seen him re-emerge with a walking stick. The
North’s ruling party newspaper Rodong Sinmun ran
front page pictures of a smiling Kim, a black cane
in his left hand, inspecting two high rise apartment
complexes built to house faculty members of a university specialising in nuclear research. The young
leader resurfaced earlier this week after dropping
out of the public eye for nearly six weeks - an unexplained absence that triggered frenzied speculation
about his health and his grip on power.
Fresh clashes in
Hong Kong as
activists regroup
Reuters
Hong Kong
H
ong Kong riot police
used pepper spray and
baton charged prodemocracy protesters who
mobilised en masse yesterday evening after a pre-dawn
clearance of a major protest
zone in the Chinese-controlled ﬁnancial hub.
Over a thousand protesters,
some clad in protective goggles and helmets, thronged to
the gritty and congested Mong
Kok district after work and
school last evening, to try to
reclaim sections of an intersection that police had cleared
in a surprise raid early yesterday.
Student leaders urged people via Facebook and social
media to retake the area that
has been a ﬂashpoint for ugly
street ﬁghts between students
and mobs, including triads,
or local gangsters, intent on
breaking up their protracted
and unprecedented protest
movement.
Demonstrators
chanting
“open the road” tried to break
through multiple police lines
and used upturned umbrellas to shield themselves from
pepper spray. In the melee,
police used batons and scufﬂed violently with throngs of
activists, some of whom were
wrestled away and taken into
police custody.
“It’s vital to keep this site,”
said Joshua Wong, a bookish 18-year-old whose ﬁery
speeches have helped drive the
protests.
“All the sites are very important. We will stay and ﬁght
till the end,” he said while
standing atop a subway station
exit and addressing the seething crowds below.
The protesters, led by a restive generation of students,
have been demanding China’s
Communist Party rulers live
up to constitutional promises
to grant full democracy to the
former British colony which
returned to Chinese rule in
1997.
Before dawn yesterday,
hundreds of police staged their
Teen surfer’s lucky
escape after shark bite
A teenage girl yesterday described her shock after being bitten by a shark when she landed
on top of it while surfing off a
popular Australian beach. KirraBelle Olsson, 13, was on her board
off Avoca Beach, 95 kilometres
north of Sydney, early yesterday
when the shark grabbed her left
leg. “She’d fallen off her board
and she felt something grabbing
her leg,” Surf Life Saving New
South Wales spokeswoman
Donna Wishart said. “She made
her own way back to shore, and
then other surfers and people
on the beach have assisted her
and... they put her in a car and
drove her to the hospital.” Olsson
said she had “dropped in” on the
shark — a surfing term for taking
someone else’s wave — and it bit
her foot and calf three times.
“I paddled in just like in shock, just
started laughing. I was like, ‘Whoa,
what the hell, I just got bitten by a
shark, oh my God’,” she told Channel Seven television from her hospital bed. “And then I got halfway
carried up the beach... and telling
my friend Saxon, ‘take photos, take
photos’.” Local media said she was
treated for deep cuts to her leg
and was due to undergo surgery
later. Wishart said Avoca Beach
would be closed for 24 hours with
lifeguards monitoring the area on
jetskis. The shark’s species was not
yet known, she added.
biggest raid yet on a pro-democracy protest camp, charging down student-led activists
who had held the intersection in one of their main protest zones for more than three
weeks.
The operation came while
many protesters were asleep
in dozens of tents or beneath
giant, blue-striped tarpaulin
sheets.
The raid was a gamble for
the 28,000-strong police
force who have come under
criticism for aggressive clearance operations with tear gas
and baton charges and for the
beating of a handcuffed protester on Wednesday.
Storming into the intersection from four directions,
with helmets, riot shields and
batons at the ready, the 800
officers caught the protesters
by surprise. Many retreated
without resisting.
“The Hong Kong government’s despicable clearance
here will cause another wave
of citizen protests,” radio talkshow host and activist Wong
Yeung-tat said earlier.
In the evening, with more
protesters streaming to the
area, authorities closed nearby
underground train station exits.
Police raised red ﬂags,
warning the protesters not
to charge, with intermittent
scuffles breaking out as protesters repeatedly tried to
breach police lines.
The escalation in the confrontation illustrates the dilemma faced by police in striking a balance between law
enforcement and not inciting
the protesters who have been
out for three weeks in three
core shopping and government
districts.
In August, Beijing offered
Hong Kong people the chance
to vote for their own leader in
2017, but said only two to three
candidates could run after getting backing from a 1,200-person “nominating committee”
stacked with Beijing loyalists.
The protesters decry this
as “fake” Chinese-style democracy and say they won’t
leave the streets unless Beijing
allows open nominations.
16 killed in vent collapse at
South Korea pop concert
AFP
Seongnam
S
ixteen people were killed
and nine others seriously
injured when they plunged
down a ventilation shaft after a
grating gave way as they watched
an outdoor pop concert yesterday in Seongnam south of Seoul.
“They were standing on the
ventilation grate to get a better
view when it collapsed under
their weight,” a spokesman for
the local ﬁre services said.
Rescuers said 16 were conﬁrmed dead, but added the death
toll might rise with some of the
injured understood to be in critical condition.
Television reports said the
victims fell more than 10 metres
(30 feet) into an underground
parking area when the grate
gave way shortly before 6:00pm
(0900 GMT).
Amateur video footage obtained by the YTN news channel
showed shocked spectators surrounding the collapsed grate as
the popular all-girl K-pop band
4Minute, apparently oblivious
to the accident, continued performing on stage.
More than 700 people were
believed to be attending the outdoor concert. “There was a sudden loud screaming, and when I
turned it looked as if people were
being sucked down into a hole,”
one witness told YTN.
A woman standing nearby said
a great “cloud of dust” billowed
up from the ventilation shaft after the grate collapsed.
Most of the dead and injured
A South Korean rescue team checks a broken ventilation grate in Seongnam City, near Seoul, after concert goers fell through it into an underground
parking area below, yesterday.
were believed to be students,
YTN said, adding that the concert organisers had repeatedly
urged the fans to move off the
grate before it collapsed.
One young spectator, Lee
Sung-Eun, told JTBC TV that
she had come close to being
among the victims.
“I wanted to climb onto the
grating so I could get a better
view of the band,” Lee said.
“But my father stopped me,
saying it was dangerous. A couple of minutes later, I heard a
bang and saw the people standing on the grating gone.”
The injured were being treated at several hospitals near the
venue. South Korea has suffered
a recent series of accidents involving young victims, including
the Sewol ferry disaster in April
that left more than 300 dead,
tional review of safety standards, as it became clear that poor
regulatory oversight was a major
contributor to the scale of the
tragedy.
The last major accident at a
music concert was in 2005 when
11 people were crushed to death
and nearly 80 injured in a stampede as thousands tried to enter
the stadium venue in the southeastern city of Sangju.
China angry over Japan lawmakers’ visit to controversial shrine
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe sent
an offering to a controversial war shrine yesterday as 100 lawmakers paid their respects
there, in a move Beijing said ratcheted up
regional tensions. A cross-party group of
parliamentarians said 110 members paid
homage at Yasukuni Shrine in downtown
Tokyo, a spot condemned by China and
Korea as a symbol of Japan’s militarist past.
The visit came just hours after Abe shook
hands with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang on
the sidelines of an Asia-Europe summit in
the Italian city of Milan, despite tensions be-
tween the two powers. Earlier media reports
said the brief exchange of pleasantries - the
first time the two men have met - took place
after news of the shrine visit broke, but a
Japanese foreign ministry official later clarified that they shook hands late on Thursday
evening. Relations between the pair have
been in deep freeze for two years over the
ownership of disputed islands and differing
interpretations of history.
The handshake came as the latest sign of a
thaw, with Japan pressing for a summit with
Chinese President Xi Jinping next month.
But the shrine offering in Abe’s name
sparked fresh anger in Beijing once again.
The offering was made as a cross-party
group of 110 Japanese parliamentarians
paid homage at the shrine to mark the start
of a four-day autumn festival.
Abe, who sent a potted tree with his name
and title prominently displayed, is thought
unlikely to go even after he returns home
today from the summit in Italy.
His visit in December last year infuriated
Beijing and Seoul, who say the inclusion
of senior war criminals among those hon-
Paciﬁc protesters in canoes
and kayaks target coal port
Reuters
Newcastle, Australia
H
undreds of protesters yesterday joined
environmental activists from a dozen South Paciﬁc
countries attempting to halt
shipping at the world’s largest
coal export terminal in eastern
Australia by forming a blockade
with canoes, surfboards and
kayaks.
The action at the entrance
to the Port of Newcastle brieﬂy
interrupted ships heading to
open waters under a police marine escort but failed to bring
any coal vessels to a halt.
Nonetheless, organisers from
the 350.Org environmental
group said it underscored concerns that the burning of coal
mined in Australia was having
devastating effects in the South
Paciﬁc.
Some experts say climate
change will cause rising sea
levels and higher tides that will
swamp lower-lying Paciﬁc is-
most of them high school students.
In February, the roof caved
in on a student-packed auditorium near the southern city of
Gyeongju, killing 10 people and
injuring more than 100. An investigation uncovered evidence
of structural ﬂaws and lax management controls.
The Sewol disaster prompted
government promises of a na-
Traditionally dressed representatives from South Pacific nations
paddle their canoe towards a ship as they participate in a protest at ships
leaving the Newcastle coal port, located north of Sydney yesterday.
lands and present other challenges such as coral bleaching
and an increase in storms and
cyclones.
“This is important today because we are here to highlight
the effects of climate change
across our islands,” said George
Nacewa, a 350.Org activist from
Fiji.
“We are not willing to drown
because of climate change. We
are trying to change the narrative from ‘we are drowning’ to
‘we are not drowning, we are
ﬁghting’.”
Newcastle handles more than
4,000 ship movements annually, more than 90% loaded with
coal from the nearby mines of
BHP Billiton,, Rio Tinto , Glencore and others.
Calling themselves the Pacific Climate Warriors, the demonstrators chanted Methodist
hymns before boarding traditional canoes to block shipping
lanes leading from the port.
They were joined by others on
surfboards and kayaks. The
ﬂotilla was quickly ﬂanked by
police on jet skis and in motor
boats as a tanker was shepherded out to sea by three tugboats.
There were no arrests.
Milan Loeak, a 26-year-old
from the Marshall Islands and
daughter of the President of the
Marshall Islands Chris Loeak,
said her islands were already
feeling the impacts.
“I’ve seen my people and my
islands suffer the impacts of climate change through droughts
and ﬂoods from high tides,” said
Loeak.
Up to a third of Australia’s
coal sector is running at a loss,
yet collieries are ﬂooding countries such as China and Japan
withmns of tonnes of coking
coal used to make steel and
thermal coal to generate power.
oured by the shrine makes it an insult to
the grievous injuries Tokyo inflicted before
and during World War II. China reacted with
renewed anger yesterday “China is gravely
concerned and firmly opposes the negative
activities in Japan surrounding the Yasukuni
Shrine,” foreign ministry spokesman Hong
Lei said in a statement. “China would like
to reiterate that Sino-Japan relations can
only realise healthy and stable development when Japan seriously faces up to and
repents of its aggressive past and disassociates itself with militarism,” he added.
‘Recruiter’ charged with
preparing Aussie attack
AFP
Brisbane
A
man arrested in Australian counter-terrorism raids in September
is facing fresh charges of preparing a terrorist attack on
home soil, police said yesterday.
Agim Kruezi, 22, was initially accused of recruiting,
funding and sending jihadist
ﬁghters to Syria after he was
detained in Brisbane on September 10.
He is now facing a new
charge of committing an act
in preparation for a terrorist
act by transporting a ﬁrearm,
which carries a maximum sentence of life in jail, authorities
said.
Kruezi was also yesterday
charged with possessing machetes, knives, balaclavas,
military fatigues, fuel, corks,
and a ﬁrearm in connection
with preparing for a terrorist
act.
“These additional charges
are as a result of ongoing investigations into the man’s
activities including the alleged
preparation and recruitment
for incursions into Syria to
ﬁght,” federal police said in a
statement.
The additional charges came
after Australia last month
raised its terror threat level
to “high” after years on “medium” on growing concern
about jihadists returning from
ﬁghting in Iraq and Syria.
The case against Kruezi and
Omar Succarieh, 31, who was
also arrested in the Queensland operation, were adjourned to December 19 after
a hearing in Brisbane Magistrates Court. Another man —
Louis Maestracci, 32, who was
charged with funding jihadists
travelling overseas to ﬁght after a separate Brisbane raid in
late September — also had his
case adjourned to the same
date.
Crown prosecutor Shane
Hunter told the court police
needed more time to prepare
their evidence against the
men because they were busy
with preparations for the G20
leaders’ summit in Brisbane in
November.
10
Gulf Times
Saturday, October 18, 2014
BRITAIN
Medieval treason
law may be used
to tackle militants
Prime Minister David
Cameron has warned that
Islamic State pose a grave
threat to Britain
Reuters
London
B
ritain may use a medieval
law dating to 1351 to charge
citizens with treason if
they go to ﬁght with Islamic State
insurgents in Iraq and Syria, Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond
said.
Prime Minister David Cameron has warned that Islamic
State, whose ﬁghters have seized
large areas of Syria and Iraq, pose
a grave threat to Britain while police and intelligence officers say
they have seen a rise in potentially deadly plots.
Security officials say some
500 Britons - largely with Muslim immigrant backgrounds - are
believed to be ﬁghting in Iraq
and Syria, though the true ﬁgure
could be much greater and security officials worry that those
who return could carry out an attack on Britain.
Hammond said any British
citizen who had sworn personal
allegiance to the so-called Islamic State could have committed an offence under the Treason
Act of 1351, which was passed
during the reign of English King
Edward III.
“We have seen people declaring that they have sworn personal allegiance to the so-called
Islamic State,” Hammond told
parliament on Thursday.
“That does raise questions
Hammond: foreign secretary
about their loyalty and allegiance
to this country and about whether the offence of treason could
have been committed,” he said,
adding he would bring the issue
to the attention of Home Secretary (interior minister) Theresa
May.
Islamic State has released
videos of the beheading of two
American and two British men
which feature a masked, blackclad militant brandishing a knife
and speaking with an English
accent who has been dubbed “Jihadi John” by British media.
A member of parliament from
the governing Conservatives,
Philip Hollobone, has argued
that using the old treason law
that singles out those who commit acts of war would be more effective against IS militants than
subsequent counter-terrorism
statutes.
The maximum sentence for
treason in Britain is life imprisonment; it was death until 1998.
The last person to be hanged
for treason in Britain was William Joyce, a propagandist for
Nazi Germany nicknamed Lord
Haw Haw who broadcast to Britain during World War Two and
who was executed in 1946.
Britain has been considered
a major target for Islamist militants since the September 11,
2001, Al Qaeda attacks on its
close ally the US, as well as Britain’s participation in the 2003
US-led invasion of Iraq that
toppled Saddam Hussain. Fifty-two people were killed when
four young Britons carried out
suicide bombings in London in
2005.
Earlier yesterday, Mark Rowley, Britain’s national policing
spokesman for counter-terrorism, said police were carrying
out security investigations at an
“exceptionally high” rate with
218 arrests so far this year.
He said they were preventing
several attack plots of “varied sophistication” a year, all inspired
by terrorism seen overseas.
RFA Argus leaving Falmouth Docks yesterday on the way to Sierra Leone to treat people infected with the Ebola virus.
British navy heading for
Sierra Leone Ebola zone
AFP
London
A
British navy ship left
yesterday for Sierra Leone laden with personnel, aid and equipment to treat
people infected with the Ebola
virus as Prime Minister David
Cameron appealed for other
countries to do more to tackle
the epidemic.
The RFA Argus, docked in Falmouth, southwest England, was
waiting for high tide before departing on the 10-day journey,
stopping at Gibraltar en route to
pick up more supplies.
The civilian-staffed military
medical support ship will carry
materials to build medical units
and help keep them supplied.
Some 80 medics and 80 marines are among the 350 people
on board.
It will travel with three Merlin
utility helicopters, air crew and
engineers to provide transport
and support to medical teams
and aid workers.
Troops with landing craft will
escort personnel ashore and
protect teams deployed on the
ground.
While the ship is equipped
as a “ﬂoating hospital”, Ebola
patients will not be brought
aboard, and any member of the
ship’s company thought to have
come into contact with victims
would be sent to treatment facilities onshore.
The ship could be stationed off
west Africa for three months.
“This is the biggest health
problem facing our world in a
generation,” Cameron said at an
Asia-Europe (ASEM) summit in
Milan.
“I think it’s time for other
countries to look at their responsibilities and their resources
and act in a similar way to what
Britain is doing in Sierra Leone,
America’s doing in Liberia and
France is doing in Guinea.
“Other countries now need to
step forward with resources and
action because taking action at
source in west Africa, that is the
best way to protect all of us here
in Europe,” he said.
Britain is taking the international lead role in tackling Ebola
in Sierra Leone due to its historic
links. Sierra Leone gained independence from Britain in 1961.
But Britain’s International
Development Secretary Justine
Greening said other nations
needed to pull their weight in the
region.
“It is simply not going to be
a tenable approach to simply
leave the UK to work with Sierra
Leone, the US with Liberia and
France with Guinea and for no
other countries to get involved,”
she told BBC radio.
“The international community now needs to wake up to this
crisis and start putting resources
in.”
A British army medical team
arrived in Sierra Leone on Thursday to work at a UK-supported
treatment centre.
Screening at British airports
for arrivals from the worst-affected region will be extended to
two further airports, the government said yesterday.
The scheme, already in place
at London Heathrow, should be
up and running at London Gatwick by the end of next week. It
will also be extended to Manchester and Birmingham airports.
Meanwhile, a researcher has
said an Ebola vaccine by British
pharmaceuticals giant GlaxoSmithKline may not be ready for
commercial use until late 2016
and should therefore not be seen
as the “primary answer” to the
current outbreak.
“We have to be able to manufacture the vaccine at doses that
would be consistent with general
use and that’s going to take well
into 2016,” Doctor Ripley Ballou,
head of GSK’s Ebola vaccine re-
search unit, told BBC radio in an
interview aired yesterday.
“I don’t think this vaccine
should be seen as the primary
answer to this particular outbreak but we certainly hope that
this vaccine could be used to prevent future outbreaks.
“Unfortunately it’s not going
to be as quickly as we would like,”
he said, adding: “In retrospect
we should have pulled the trigger
earlier.”
Ballou said data on the vaccine’s efficacy and safety would
not be available before the end
of 2015.
“In order for the vaccine to be
used we have to have data on its
safety and its efficacy and those
data will not be available before
the end of 2015,” he said.
He added that the whole process was “incredibly accelerated”
as vaccine development would
normally take seven to 10 years.
GSK’s is one of two vaccines along with one by US
group NewLink Genetics that
the World Health Organisation
has been focusing on and it has
helped accelerate clinical trials.
Some clinical trials of the GSK
vaccine have begun in the US and
Britain and the WHO has said
that around 10,000 doses of the
vaccine should be available by
early 2015.
One of two armoured police vans leaving Westminster Magistrates Court in London yesterday shortly
after the appearance of four men charged over an alleged terror plot in front of a judge.
Four held under terrorism laws
‘plotted to kill police officers’
Reuters
London
F
our men appeared in court
yesterday, charged under
anti-terrorism
legislation
with swearing allegiance to Islamic
State (IS) militants and preparing to
launch an attack on policemen or
soldiers on the streets of London.
The four, who were arrested
over the past two weeks, are variously charged with obtaining a
handgun and conducting “hostile
reconnaissance” of Shepherd’s
Bush police station in west London
and the nearby White City reservist army barracks.
Further charges include storing images sent via photo-sharing
service Instagram of two police
officers and of two civilian police
community support officers.
“This is a plot, in essence, to
shoot, to kill, police officers or
soldiers on the streets of London,”
prosecutor Mark Dawson told
Westminster Magistrates’ Court.
Tarik Hassane, 21; Suhaib Majeed, 20; Nyall Hamlett, 24 and
Momen Motasim, 21, all from the
London area were remanded in
custody after a brief hearing to
appear at the Old Bailey court on
October 27. They have yet to enter
a plea.
The charges variously laid
against them also include setting
up methods of secret communication and possession of extreme
jihadi material which included
footage of the beheading by IS of
American journalist Steven Sotloff
last month.
A ﬁfth man, Nathan Cuffy, 25,
also from London, was remanded
in custody on ﬁrearms offences.
Cancer boy leaves intensive
care in Prague hospital
AFP
Prague
F
ive-year-old British brain
tumour patient Ashya
King has left intensive
care after undergoing potentially life-saving proton beam
therapy, the hospital in Prague
where he was treated said yesterday.
The thirtieth and last of the
sessions will take place on October 24, said Jana Kulhankova,
spokeswoman of the Proton
Therapy Centre of Prague.
“Ashya left the intensive care
unit on Tuesday and has been
put in an individual room,” she
said.
He has “started to put on
weight, he is smiling, and he is
reacting to the gestures of his
parents and those close to him,”
he said.
King’s case made headlines
after his parents removed him
from a hospital in Britain in August against doctors’ wishes,
sparking an international manhunt. He began treatment in
Prague in mid-September, where
he is put under general anaesthetic for the therapy, which is
not available in Britain.
It is touted as more precise
than conventional radiotherapy
as it uses a proton beam to target
only malignant cells in a highly
precise manner.
Ashya arrived in Prague on
September 8 from Spain where
his parents had taken him after
whisking him away from South-
amption General Hospital in
England because they feared that
traditional radiotherapy would
damage his brain.
His parents were detained in
Spain on an international warrant, after British authorities
suspected they were not acting
in the best interests of the child.
But after the couple spent four
days in a Spanish prison, a British court reunited them with
their son in a Spanish hospital
and allowed them to travel to
Prague for the treatment.
London reigns as the divorce capital of world
AFP
London
L
as Vegas may be the best
place for marriage but London is known as the divorce
capital of the world, boosted by a
ruling yesterday on a Malaysian
beauty queen’s bid for a big money split from her tycoon husband.
Thousands of wealthy Chinese, Russians, Americans and
Europeans, many of whom work
in the City of London ﬁnancial
district or own property in Britain, now end their marriages before an English judge.
Few are as rich as businessman
Khoo Kay Peng, reputedly worth
at least £400mn ($640mn) and
Pauline Chai, tales of whose
1,000 pairs of shoes and £22,000
monthly budget for a Rolls Royce
plus chauffeur has enthralled
Britain’s press.
But their case has drawn fresh
attention to a phenomenon
which has made a handful of
lawyers almost as rich as some of
their clients.
“England has become very attractive for wives, in particular
because awards here are considerably higher than almost anywhere in the world,” said Sandra
Davis, head of the family law department at Mishcon de Reya.
“By the same count, it’s a jurisdiction that the wealth creator generally wants to avoid,”
added Davis, who represented
Diana, princess of Wales in her
divorce from Prince Charles and
US model Jerry Hall in her split
from Rolling Stones singer Mick
Jagger.
A judge at London’s High
Court ruled yesterday that it
could hear the divorce between
Chai and Peng after his lawyers
argued it should be heard in Malaysia instead.
The former Miss Malaysia was
in court for the ruling and hugged
her family and lawyers in delight
at the news.
“I am pleased the judge recognised my connection with
this great country,” Chai said in
a statement afterwards. “I am so
pleased that I, my children and
indeed my shoes have found a
home here.”
Her legal team, led by the
“Diva of Divorce” Ayesha Vardag,
successfully argued that Chai
had lived in England - in a £30mn
mansion outside London surrounded by 1,000 acres of park-
Pauline Chai: divorce case
land featuring a menagerie of animals - for long enough to satisfy
the legal requirements.
The case could set a new record
for England’s biggest divorce
payout due to the length of the
couple’s marriage, which lasted
over 40 years.
That is currently held by late
Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky, who reportedly paid up
to £220mn to his ex-wife Galina
Besharova in 2011.
While no precise ﬁgures exist
on how many divorces in London
have an international element,
lawyers say they are common.
Davis said 75 percent of her clients in this ﬁeld had an international link.
So what is it about England
which makes it such an attractive
destination for divorce?
“The short answer is money,”
said Elizabeth Hicks, a partner at
law ﬁrm Irwin Mitchell.
Following a landmark case in
2000, English courts start from
the assumption that marital assets should be split 50/50, fa-
vouring the less wealthy spouse.
This contrasts with many other countries and means awards in
England are several times bigger
than they would be elsewhere.
Another factor is that prenuptial agreements, signed before marriage to protect the richer spouse’s assets, are not legally
binding in England.
English judges also take into
account a wider range of assets
when calculating each spouse’s
wealth, which also appeals to the
less wealthy partner.
The super-rich are not the
only foreigners to divorce in the
English courts.
While most cases are legitimate, it emerged last month that
179 Italian couples who had been
trying to avoid lengthy procedures in their own country had
divorces granted in England cancelled as they had never lived
here.
Courts had been supplied with
a fake English address in a scam
organised by an Italian agency.
Divorce lawyers may be happy
with the extra fees that foreign
splits bring them but some judges seem weary of the strain which
such cases are putting on the
English legal system.
After reading out a three-hour
judgement in Chai v Peng yesterday, Judge David Bodey implored
both sides “with all the strength
I can muster” to reach an agreement as soon as possible.
“There is enough in the kitty
that they would be hard-pressed
to spend it all in their lifetimes,
even if they wanted to,” he added,
ruefully.
Gulf Times
Saturday, October 18, 2014
11
EUROPE
Russia, Ukraine
strike tentative
gas supply deal
Reuters
Milan
R
ussia and Ukraine made
progress yesterday towards
resolving a dispute over
gas supplies in time for winter,
but European leaders said Moscow still had to do much more
to prop up a fragile ceaseﬁre and
end ﬁghting in eastern Ukraine.
The mooted deal could reopen
Russian gas to Ukraine cut off
since June, and ensure supply to
European buyers further west
before demand surges in the cold
months and stocks run down.
It came as something of a surprise after talks in Milan that the
Kremlin said were “full of misunderstandings and disagreements”.
Russia’s Vladimir Putin told
reporters that a deal ensuring gas supplies “at least for the
winter” had been reached after a
ﬁnal one-on-one meeting with
Ukraine’s Petro Poroshenko,
which followed talks attended by
European leaders.
“We agreed on all the param-
Polish
officer
charged
with
spying
Reuters/AFP
Warsaw
A
uthorities in Poland have
arrested two men on suspicion of spying for Russia, a Polish lawmaker briefed on
the issue said yesterday, a case
likely to aggravate tensions between two countries already at
odds over the Ukraine crisis.
Both suspects, an officer
working for the Polish ministry
of defence and a Warsaw-based
lawyer, were detained by Poland’s Internal Security Agency
(ABW) on Wednesday.
Prosecutors have not revealed
for what country the suspects
are alleged to have been spying.
But following a brieﬁng by the
secret services which took place
behind closed doors yesterday,
a member of the parliamentary
intelligence committee said that
Russia was involved.
“Actions are being taken in
respect of two agents of the Russian state,” the lawmaker, Marek
Biernacki told reporters.
“This was deﬁnitely a successful shot aimed at GRU,” he
said, a reference to the Russian
military’s Main Intelligence Directorate.
Yesterday a Warsaw military
court ordered that the military
officer, a lieutenant-colonel, be
held in custody for three months
pending trial.
“He was charged with collaborating with a foreign intelligence service ... and passing on
sensitive information,” said military prosecutor Ireneusz Szelag.
A civilian court also ruled
that the lawyer be held for three
months.
“The two cases are linked but
that does not mean that the two
men were working in tandem,”
said prosecutor-general Andrzej
Seremet.
A Reuters reporter inside the
high-security court saw the
lawyer, dressed in a suit and
handcuffed, being escorted
along a corridor after the hearing
by three security agency officers
wearing balaclavas.
Polish radio station Radio Zet
reported that the lawyer was a
citizen of Russia as well as Poland, citing unnamed sources,
but officials have not conﬁrmed
this.
eters of this deal,” Putin said, but
he urged European countries to
help Ukraine meet a debt for gas,
which he said stood at $4.5bn.
The agreement followed a hectic series of meetings on the margins of a summit between Asian
and European leaders in Milan
at which Europeans showed no
signs of agreeing to lift sanctions
against Moscow imposed over
the Ukraine crisis.
There was some progress
on the issue of monitoring the
Ukraine-Russian border and the
so-called demarcation line separating pro-Russia militias and
Ukrainian forces.
Italy, Ukraine and Russia
agreed to join France and Germany in providing surveillance
drones for the Organisation for
Security and Co-operation in
Europe (OSCE), which is overseeing a ceaseﬁre.
However, an overall solution to a crisis which has revived
memories of the Cold War still
appeared remote, with key issues
open including the question of
local elections in breakaway regions of eastern Ukraine.
And the meetings demonstrated the bitterness of relations
between Putin and European
leaders, above all Germany’s
Chancellor Angela Merkel.
“I cannot see a breakthrough
here at all so far,” said Merkel
after one meeting, adding: “We
will continue to talk. There was
progress on some details, but the
main issue is continued violations of the territorial integrity of
Ukraine.”
Kiev and its Western backers
accuse Moscow of aiding a separatist revolt in Ukraine by providing troops and arms.
Russia denies direct involvement but says it has a right to
defend the interests of Russian
speakers.
Fighting has largely died down
under a ceaseﬁre agreed last
month, but Western countries
say Moscow must take further
steps to reassure Kiev if it wants
sanctions to be lifted.
Even as the ﬁghting has taken
place, Russia and Ukraine have
been locked in a dispute over
prices Kiev should pay for Russian gas.
Russia, seeking higher prices
and accusing Kiev of running up
debt, cut off supplies to Ukraine
in June.
This has sparked fears that the
Russian gas that transits Ukraine
to Europe could also be disrupted
when demand goes up this winter.
EU officials said the gas talks
would continue in Brussels next
week. Poroshenko told reporters
he hoped the accord reached yesterday could be ﬁrmed up in time
for the meeting.
Underlining the tense situation, artillery ﬁre could be heard
in Donetsk, the eastern city that
is the main stronghold of proRussian separatists ﬁghting for a
split from Kiev.
Alexey Miller, the head of Russian gas giant Gazprom, who met
the head of Ukrainian energy
group Naftogaz earlier in the day,
said that for supplies to resume,
Ukraine would have to agree to
Russia’s conditions.
“If these conditions are not
agreed, then the present regime
will apply,” he said.
Clearly sympathetic with Kiev,
Merkel, Putin, Hollande and Ukraine’s President Poroshenko (right) are seen at a meeting yesterday in
Milan during the 10th Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM).
European leaders lined up to tell
Russia to ensure full implementation of the ceaseﬁre deal.
Merkel’s position as German
leader means she sets the tone
of EU relations with Russia and
has taken the lead within Europe
in trying to persuade Putin to
change tack over Ukraine.
She had a rocky time in Milan, however, with one German
official saying that the Russian
leader had not displayed a “too
constructive mood”.
An initial meeting set for
Thursday was delayed for hours
because Putin ﬂew into Italy well
behind schedule.
They then held more than
2-1/2 hours of talks that ran well
past midnight, with both sides
acknowledging discussions had
been unproductive.
Yesterday, Merkel reprimanded the former Soviet KGB spy in
front of EU and Asian leaders, according to people present.
After a speech in which Putin
raised doubts about the sovereignty of Ukraine, Merkel reminded him of the 1994 Budapest agreement, in which Russia
recognised the sovereignty and
territorial integrity of Ukraine,
including Crimea, a territory
Russia seized in March and annexed.
The Kremlin also sounded unhappy about early meetings.
“The talks are indeed difficult,
full of misunderstandings, disagreements, but they are nevertheless ongoing, the exchange
of opinion is in progress,” said
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry
Peskov, accusing some unnamed
participants of taking an “absolutely biased, non-ﬂexible, nondiplomatic” approach.
Still, despite the difficult start,
French President Francois Hollande said the later meetings
were more productive.
“A deal on gas is now really
within reach, which is very important for the Ukrainians and
very reassuring for the Russians,
because they really want to be
paid,” he said.
Russia is Europe’s biggest gas
supplier, accounting for around a
third of its needs, and about half
the Russian gas that the EU buys
comes via Ukraine.
The stand-off over pricing is
the third in a decade between
Moscow and Kiev, although this
time the stakes are higher because of the ﬁghting in Ukraine.
More than 3,600 people have
died in eastern Ukraine since
ﬁghting broke out in mid-April
when armed separatists declared
they were setting up their own
states in two provinces.
Although Putin announced
this week that Russian troops
near the border with Ukraine
would be pulled back, Western
officials want to see clear evidence that Moscow is acting on
this.
“Vladimir Putin said very
clearly he doesn’t want a ‘frozen conﬂict’ and doesn’t want a
divided Ukraine,” British Prime
Minister David Cameron said.
“But if that’s the case, then Russia now needs to take the actions
to put in place all that has been
agreed. If those things don’t happen, then clearly the European
Union, Britain included, must
keep in place the sanctions and
the pressure so we don’t have this
sort of conﬂict in our continent.”
Minister delivers ‘shirt front’ Sweden hunting
suspected sub off
over MH17 crash at ASEM
Stockholm coast
AFP
Milan
AFP/Reuters
Stockholm
A
ustralian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop delivered
a diplomatic version of
the “shirt front” promised by
Prime Minister Tony Abbott as
Russia came under ﬁre over the
fate of ﬂight MH17 at the ASEM
summit.
In an interview with AFP yesterday, Bishop revealed that she
had taken her Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov to task on
the sidelines of the Asia-Europe
Meeting (ASEM).
She said that she had bluntly
spelled out her government’s
frustration at what it sees as
Moscow’s hampering of the
Dutch-led probe into the shooting down of the Malaysian airliner over eastern Ukraine in
July.
All 298 people on board died,
including 38 who were citizens
or residents of Australia.
Western governments believe
the plane was shot down by proRussian rebels with a Russianmade missile.
Moscow says Ukraine is responsible for the incident.
Bishop’s intervention came
as Dutch Prime Minister Mark
Rutte upbraided Russian President Vladimir Putin for his failure to rein in the pro-Moscow
rebels accused of restricting access to the crash site, which has
never been properly secured.
A total of 153 Dutch nationals
died in the crash and Dutch investigators are leading the probe
into what caused it.
A total of 26 people who were
on board the Amsterdam-Kuala
Lumpur ﬂight are still unaccounted for because their remains have not been identiﬁed.
Distressingly for relatives,
there may still be human parts
which have not been recovered
from the crash site, which was
inaccessible for much of August
and early September because of
ﬁghting in the area.
“Russia has not been as cooperative as we would have expected,” Bishop said after her
face-to-face encounter with
Lavrov.
“They even took action in the
UN Security Council seeking to
undermine the impartiality and
independence of the investigation.
“We fully support the Dutchled investigation and I asked
Lavrov for Russia’s full cooperation and that they use
T
he Swedish armed forces
announced a military
operation in islands
off Stockholm late yesterday
evening following reports of
suspicious “foreign underwater activity”.
“We have begun an intelligence operation ... involving
ships, helicopters and several
ground units,” Commander
Jonas Wikstroem told reporters, adding that the operation
was based on a tip-off from a
“credible source”.
Wikstroem did not specify
how close the operation was
to the Swedish capital but said
that the military was informing the public as the area has
“heavily trafficked”.
In recent months, Swedish
media have reported an uptick
in Baltic Sea manoeuvres by
the Russian air force, including a close encounter between
a Swedish spy plane in international airspace off Russia’s
Baltic Sea coast.
“As the government has said,
the situation has deteriorated
in the Baltic Sea,” Wikstroem
said, adding that no weapons
had been used in the current
operation.
During the Cold War the
then-neutral – and now nonaligned – Nordic country was
regularly on alert following
Russian submarine sightings,
including one notable case in
1981 when a Soviet U-boat ran
aground several miles from a
largest naval base
The stranding of U137 during the Cold war marked the
start of a period when the navy
repeatedly attacked suspected
foreign submarines with depth
charges in Swedish territorial
waters.
Countries in the Baltic Sea
region have become increasingly wary of Russia’s ambitions since Moscow annexed
Ukraine’s Crimea in March.
Rosneft sues EU
AFP
Brussels
R
Solidified molten steel is seen in this picture taken on Wednesday among the wreckage of Malaysia
Airlines flight MH17 near the village of Rassipnoe.
their inﬂuence over the rebels
to ensure there can be full access to the crash site, not only
for the purposes of checking for
any remains but also to enable
the investigators to carry out a
thorough investigation into the
causes of the crash so that we
can bring those responsible to
justice.”
Bishop acknowledged that
Lavrov had ﬂat-batted her complaints, ensuring the explosive
issue is likely to resurface when
Putin visits Australia for next
month’s G20 summit.
“The response was somewhat
predictable,” Bishop said. “He
said it was a matter for Ukraine,
as a crash that occurred in
Ukrainian airspace. That is not a
view I share.”
Abbott has vowed to tackle
Putin over MH17 at the Brisbane
G20 meeting and made waves
by using the term “shirtfront” –
which comes from testosteronefuelled Australian Rules Football
and refers to an aggressive body
charge on an opponent.
Russian
Prime
Minister
Dmitry Medvedev laughed off
the threat earlier this week,
pointing out that his boss Putin,
a judo black-belt, was unlikely
to be intimidated by the Australian’s rhetoric.
An initial report by Dutch investigators issued last month
found that the jet was hit by
multiple “high-energy” objects
but did not apportion blame.
Rutte used his meeting with
Putin to demand “maximum cooperation” in the probe, he said.
ussian oil giant Rosneft
and a close associate of
President Vladimir Putin are ﬁghting the EU in court
over sanctions imposed on
some of Russia’s biggest companies, an official website indicated yesterday.
A Russian billionaire, Arkady
Rotenberg, who is also Putin’s
judo sparring partner, ﬁled two
suits at the European Union’s
Court of Justice in Luxembourg, while state-owned Rosneft ﬁled one.
The suits were ﬁled last
week, the website indicated,
and were ﬁrst reported by the
Financial Times.
Contacted by AFP in Moscow, both Rosneft and a
spokesman for Rotenberg refused comment.
The suits follow the EU’s
tough new package of economic sanctions against Russia
decided last summer.
The latest measures targeted
major Russian energy, ﬁnance
and defence companies including Rosneft and weapons
manufacturer Kalashnikov.
The bloc also placed asset
freezes and visa bans on a host
of Russian ﬁgures close to Putin as well as rebels in Ukraine
and annexed Crimea.
Russian banking giant VTB
– also targeted by sanctions –
said it was considering whether to take legal action.
A spokeswoman for VTB told
AFP bank lawyers were “thoroughly studying the issue.”
The EU sanctions adopted in
September are a tougheningup of measures adopted in July
after the shooting down of Malaysia Airlines ﬂight MH17 over
rebel-held east Ukraine.
The European Council,
representing the EU member
states, said that it would defend the measures which were
“imposed over Russia’s role in
destabilising eastern Ukraine”.
“The council takes great
care to ensure legal robustness when adopting restrictive
measures and takes due account of relevant case-law of
the court,” it said.
12
Gulf Times
Saturday, October 18, 2014
EUROPE
Turkey drops case that
dogged Erdogan govt
Reuters/AFP
Istanbul
T
urkish prosecutors have
dropped a corruption
case against 53 suspects,
among them two former minister’s sons, drawing a line under a
scandal that dogged now-President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s inner circle for months, media said
yesterday.
The scandal posed one of the
biggest challenges to Erdogan’s
11-year rule as prime minis-
ter, leading three members of
his cabinet to quit and drawing
international criticism for his
response – tightening Internet
controls and reassigning police,
judges and prosecutors.
Istanbul prosecutors ruled
that there was no case to answer
as evidence had not been collected appropriately, there was
no evidence of a crime and no
criminal gang was uncovered,
broadcaster CNN Turk reported.
Officials from the prosecutor’s
office were not available to comment.
In May a Turkish court lifted
a travel ban on one of the suspects, Iranian businessman Reza
Zarrab, in what was seen as a
sign that the investigation was
running out of steam.
Among the other suspects in
the case were sons of former interior minister Muammer Guler
and former economy minister
Zafer Caglayan.
A police report leaked earlier
this year presented Zarrab as the
ringleader of a group which allegedly helped Iran to exploit a
loophole in the West’s sanctions
regime that for a time allowed
the Islamic Republic to purchase
gold with oil and gas revenues.
The report alleged bribes were
paid to Turkey’s then economy
minister, interior minister and
EU affairs minister as well as the
chief executive of state-controlled lender Halkbank.
All three ministers, who subsequently resigned or were
dropped from the cabinet, denied wrongdoing and were not
charged.
They were detained in police
raids in December last year when
the corruption scandal ﬁrst
erupted.
All suspects had later been released pending a trial.
Halkbank has denied violating
any domestic or international
laws.
Despite the controversy, Erdogan’s ruling AK Party swept
to victory in local elections at
the end of March that were seen
as a referendum on his rule, and
prosecutors have dismissed other corruption cases in the affair.
Erdogan subsequently won
the country’s ﬁrst direct election
for president in August.
He cast the graft probe as an
attempted “judicial coup”, a plot
to unseat him devoid of legal
merit and said it had been orchestrated by US-based Islamic
preacher Fethullah Gulen, a
former ally with inﬂuence in the
police and judiciary.
Gulen denied involvement.
Thousands of police officers
and hundreds of members of the
judiciary have been reassigned
since the scandal, with several
prosecutors removed from the
corruption case.
Train drivers
go on strike
as schools
start holiday
Reuters/DPA/AFP
Berlin
G
erman train drivers began their second national strike in a week
yesterday, halting services in the
build-up to one of the busiest
weekends of 2014 in a dispute
over pay and negotiating rights
with state-owned rail operator
Deutsche Bahn.
The strike will stop about
two-thirds of national train
services and many lines in Berlin
and other cities as school holidays start in most of Germany’s
federal states, the train operator
said.
Drivers’ union GDL is seeking
a 5% pay rise for 20,000 drivers
and a shortening of their working week to 37 hours from 39
hours.
It also wants to set wage deals
for around 17,000 train guards
and other personnel, also among
its members.
This is something Deutsche
Bahn rejects, however, saying
that it will only negotiate with
the largest union representing workers in those categories,
EVG.
“The GDL is running riot,”
Deutsche Bahn said in a statement, accusing the union of
“spoiling the holidays of millions of Germans without any
need”.
The statement added that the
union chief Claus Weselsky had
“lost all sense of proportion”.
“This isn’t about the interests
of train drivers, but the omnipotence fantasies of a union official,” Deutsche Bahn said.
Freght train drivers started
their strike at 3pm yesterday.
A commuter waits yesterday on an empty platform next to an electronic billboard announcing a strike by German train drivers at the main
railway station in Berlin. German train drivers will stage a nationwide strike for the second time this week in a drawn-out dispute over pay
and conditions with state-owned rail operator Deutsche Bahn, union GDL said yesterday.
Passenger train drivers were
due to join in from 2am today,
with both stoppages due to come
to an end at 4am on Monday,
said the union.
Deutsche Bahn has presented
a new offer to GDL and proposed
talks for tomorrow if the union
calls off the strike, a spokesman
said.
Two weeks ago, the company
offered GDL a 2% pay rise which
it rejected.
Passenger train drivers staged
Bishops slam brakes on reform
push for gays and divorcees
AFP
Vatican City
air travel, after several airline
strikes. A draft law is expected in
November.
GDL accused management of
issuing “nice-sounding statements with no substance”.
The union also wants to represent other groups of employees within Deutsche Bahn, not
just the drivers, but conductors,
catering staff, dispatchers and
other staff as well, a demand
which management rejects.
“It’s high time that DB accepts
the facts,” GDL said, claiming
that it represented 51% of the
group’s 37,000 employees.
In addition to the rail strikes,
travellers in Germany have also
been hit recently by repeated
walkouts by pilots of airlines
within the Lufthansa group.
This week, the pilots of
Lufthansa’s low-cost subsidiary Germanwings walked off the
job for 12 hours on Wednesday,
grounding hundreds of ﬂights
and thousands of passengers.
Video shows Spain police
beating, expelling migrant
AFP
Madrid
C
atholic bishops have
spoken out against a
landmark Vatican report calling for a more open
approach to gay believers, presenting a series of stronglyworded changes bound to disappoint progressives.
A preliminary report on
Monday for a special synod of
bishops in the Vatican on family
matters made waves around the
world by suggesting the church
should reach out to homosexuals, who have “gifts and qualities to offer the Christian community”.
But the Vatican on Thursday published a fresh report
summing up the reactions of
10 working groups of bishops,
which smacked in places of
panic among conservatives determined to derail Pope Francis’s push for reform.
South African Cardinal Wilfrid Napier moderated a group
of bishops from Africa, Asia and
Oceania which said the initial
report placed “too much emphasis on the problems facing
the family”, and wanted “the
Word of God, and the beauty of
the Gospel of Marriage” to take
centre stage.
The church “must continue
to promote the revealed nature
of marriage as always between
one man and one woman united in lifelong, life-giving, and
faithful communion”, they said.
A group led by Austrian Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn
said that they “respect and
welcome homosexual people”
but warned that “this does not
mean that the church should le-
a 14-hour strike over Wednesday
and Thursday.
The magnitude of the industrial action was surprising in a
country where warning strikes
rarely last more than a day.
The last time Deutsche Bahn
was hit by an industrial dispute
like this this was in 2007-2008.
Berlin is working on legislation to stop small groups of
employees from paralysing
large parts of the country’s infrastructure, such as rail and
A
Francis: has called for the church to take a more merciful approach
to sinners.
gitimise homosexual practices”.
Other groups protested over
proposals to be more open towards unmarried couples who
live together, or divorced people
living with new partners.
Ultra-conservative American
cardinal Raymond Leo Burke’s
group said that where the report
“appeared to be suggesting that
sex outside of marriage may be
permissible, or that cohabitation may be permissible, we
have attempted to show why
such lifestyles do not lead to
human fulﬁlment”.
“We believe that if we imply
that certain lifestyles are acceptable, then concerned and
worried parents could very easily say ‘Why are we trying so
hard to encourage our sons and
daughters to live the Gospel and
embrace church teaching?’” it
said.
The group also said it was
against allowing divorced and
re-married people to take
communion – just one of several hot-button issues that appeared to have received positive
backing in the initial report.
Francis has called for the
church to take a more merciful
approach to sinners, famously
saying of homosexual people,
“Who am I to judge?”
It remains to be seen whether
the ﬁnal document, which will
be released today, will reﬂect his
hopes to make the centuriesold institution a more welcoming place.
While the working groups
of bishops were largely headed
by conservatives, the drafting
committee charged with writing today’s closing document
is made up of perceived progressives appointed by Francis
himself.
The document will be put to
a vote, and with tension rife in
the Vatican, religious experts
will be watching to see just how
close the ﬁnal result may be.
video of Spanish police
beating an African migrant with a truncheon
and carrying him apparently
unconscious back across the
border to Morocco caused outrage in Spain yesterday.
The man was one of about
100 migrants who attempted to
climb from Moroccan soil over a
6m (20’) fence into the Spanish
territory of Melilla on Wednesday.
The local humanitarian group
Prodein which ﬁlmed the video
identiﬁed the man as a 23-yearold Cameroonian named Danny.
In the video, an officer of the
Spanish Civil Guard police force
is seen hitting the man with a
truncheon as the migrant hung
barefoot from the fence on the
Spanish side.
Danny is then seen dropping
from the fence into the hands of
a group of Spanish officers and
lying on the ground.
Spanish officers later carry
him by the arms and legs as he
lies limp, through a gate in the
fence and back to the Moroccan
side of the border.
Jose Palazon, the leader of
Prodein who made the video,
accused officers of “a high level
of violence”.
He said the migrant “should
have had medical assistance but
did not get it”.
“The whole thing was absolutely illegal. It is a monument
of contempt for the law, morality and ethics,” Palazon told
AFP yesterday.
Rights groups accuse the
Days after
taking
office,
Belgian
coalition
wins vote
AFP
Brussels
B
elgium’s right-wing coalition government won
a vote of conﬁdence just
days after taking office, despite
opposition demands for new
prime minister Charles Michel
to sack two ministers over a Nazi
collaboration row.
In a vote on Thursday evening,
the government, which was
sworn in last Saturday, four
months after a general election,
received the backing of 84 deputies, with 58 voting against and
one abstention.
The vote came after 30 hours
of sometimes heated parliamentary debate, which had begun on
Wednesday morning.
Michel, 38, who is Belgium’s
youngest prime minister since
1840, now heads a government coalition of three Dutchspeaking parties, including the
nationalist New Flemish Alliance (N-VA), as well as his own
French-speaking party, MR.
Comments by two N-VA ministers have marred the ﬁrst few
days of Michel’s government.
Interior Minister Jan Jambon
was quoted as saying in a newspaper that Flemish collaborators
with Nazi occupiers in Belgium
during World War II “had their
reasons”.
Immigration and Asylum
Minister Theo Francken was
meanwhile pictured at a meeting to mark the 90th birthday of
a man convicted after the war of
collaborating with the Nazis.
The row has reopened old
wounds over the war, a divisive
chapter in a country already
sharply divided between the
richer Flemish north and the
poorer Francophone south.
Left-wing opposition members, particularly French-speaking ones in the linguisticallydivided country, were furious,
with Socialist Laurette Onkelinx
saying she heard the “sound of
boots”.
Francken has since apologised, and said: “I guarantee that
I will be a secretary of state in the
interests of all citizens”.
Another socialist, Julie Fernandez, had called for Francken to
be sacked.
As well as the row over collaboration, Michel is already at
odds with the unions.
Prior to the vote, Michel, in a
major economic and social policy speech on Tuesday, had outlined his intention to raise the
pension aged by two years to 67
by 2030.
In response, the unions who
have announced a general strike
for December 15.
Germany to seize
identity cards to
stop jihadist travel
This handout picture released on Thursday by local humanitarian
group Prodein shows Spanish officers beating would-be migrants
who climb a border fence on the Spanish enclave of Melilla.
Spanish police of illegal “onthe-spot deportations” of migrants who have stormed the
border fence in groups of hundreds over recent months.
A spokeswoman for the
Spanish government delegation in Melilla, Irene Flores, said
that the migrant on Wednesday
was not injured and had offered
“passive resistance”.
Spain’s government denies
that migrants who climb the
fence should be considered as
having reached Spanish territory and says it has the right to
return those intercepted while
perched there.
“The Civil Guard acted in
scrupulous fulﬁlment of the
law,” Flores told AFP. “We do
not consider these to be cases
of deporting people on the spot,
but of turning them away at the
border.”
On February 6 about 15 mi-
grants drowned in Moroccan
waters while trying to swim
from a beach in Morocco to
Ceuta, the other of Spain’s two
north African territories.
Witnesses accused Spanish
security forces of ﬁring rubber
bullets at the migrants in the
water.
The government admitted
using rubber bullets but denied
its forces had targeted the migrants directly.
The conservative Popular
Party government drew ﬁre
over Wednesday’s video, with
opposition parties accusing it of
lacking clear protocol for border
guards.
“This is one more example of
absolutely intolerable behaviour by members of the security
forces and inhuman treatment
of people,” said the parliamentary spokesman for the United
Left party, Joan Coscubiela.
Germany has announced new
measures to prevent its citizens
from travelling to join the jihadist
cause in Iraq and Syria, including
confiscating their identity papers.
Under a deal struck by interior
ministers from the federal
level and Germany’s 16 states,
authorities will be able to take
away identity cards from alleged
Islamic militants to stop them
from leaving the country.
Until now it has been possible to
make passports invalid to keep
German citizens from travelling
abroad.
But because German citizens can
use their national identity card
to travel to Turkey, a frequent
jumping-off point for Iraq and
Syria, Germany is moving to close
the loophole.
“We don’t want terrorism to be
exported from Germany,” Interior
Minister Thomas de Maiziere said.
He added that Berlin aimed at
all costs to head off the return
of fighters who had gained
experience and training in the
region to Germany, where they
could mount attacks.
De Maiziere said Germany also
wanted to stem a flow of Kurds
aiming to join the battle against
the extremist group Islamic State
(IS) for fear they would return
home radicalised.
Those affected will receive a
substitute document to be used
for identification in Germany.
Gulf Times
Saturday, October 18, 2014
13
INDIA
New air quality index to clear the fog over data
Reuters
New Delhi
I
ndia has launched a new air
quality index to help citizens
understand complex pollution data and its implications for
their health, the environment
minister said yesterday.
A World Health Organisation
(WHO) study of 1,600 cities released in May found New Delhi
had the world’s dirtiest air with
an annual average of 153 micrograms of small particulates,
known as PM2.5, per cubic metre.
Thirteen of the dirtiest 20 cities
worldwide were in India, the WHO
said. India rejected the report.
The new index, launched as
part of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ‘Clean India Mission’,
will provide one consolidated
number after tracking eight pollutants and will use colour coding to describe associated health
impacts.
“In our cities air pollution is
increasing ... we need to stop it,”
Environment Minister Prakash
Javadekar said.
“This (index) will provide the
common citizen one colour, one
number and one description so
that he can understand what is
the level of air pollution.”
Currently, India’s air quality
status is reported through “voluminous data”, the government
said. This makes it difficult for
people to understand particle
names such as PM2.5 or PM10.
“People don’t know what
these pollutants are and what
happens when they reach a certain level. This index will help
people understand air quality
better,” said Anumita Roychowdhury, head of air pollution team
at the Centre for Science and
Environment. The environment
minister said the government
would also start action-oriented
programmes in collaboration
with the states to improve air
quality, but he gave no details.
Roychowdhury said India
needed to do more and should
have emergency measures in
place when pollution levels are
high. In China, for example,
primary schools are shut when
pollution levels are at “red alert”
levels, she said.
Air pollution killed about seven million people in 2012, making it the world’s single biggest
environmental health risk, the
WHO said in March.
India, China
to conduct
anti-terror
exercises
Reuters
New Delhi
I
ndia will hold counter-terrorism exercises with China
despite a recent face-off on
their disputed border, officials
said, in a sign the two governments want to manage their
deep differences.
India, which under Prime Minister Narendra Modi has struck
an assertive national security
posture, also agreed to China’s
request to move next month’s
exercises away from the border
with Pakistan with which China
shares a close relationship.
The manoeuvres will come
just weeks after thousands of
Indian and Chinese soldiers
confronted each other on their
de facto border in the western
Himalayas, accusing each other
of building roads and observations posts in disputed territory.
“The exercises are a conﬁdence-building measure, it is in
everyone’s interest,” Jayadeva
Ranade, the China specialist on
India’s National Security Advisory Board, said. “It doesn’t mean
anyone is conceding anything.”
The row in the Chumar sector
of the Ladakh region erupted just
as China’s President Xi Jinping
was visiting New Delhi for his
ﬁrst summit with Modi since the
Indian leader’s election in May.
The leaders of the Asian giants
aim to ramp up commercial ties.
India sees the anti-terrorism
collaboration with China as a
way to highlight the threat they
both face from Islamist militants
in Pakistan.
It had arranged for the Chinese to practise mock assaults in
Bhatinda, about 110km from the
Pakistan border.
But last week China sought
a change in the location of only
the second such exercises after
tension rose on the India-Pakistan border with the two sides
exchanging ﬁre, killing civilians.
“China had agreed to it initially,
but then they opted for a change
because the border got hot,” said
an Indian military source, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The two armies will ﬁeld 103
soldiers each for the “hand-inhand” manoeuvres in the western city of Pune that involve
scenarios such as recapturing a
border post taken over by terrorists, the military source said.
India has long faced attacks
that it blames on Pakistan-based
militant groups such as the
Lashkar-e-Taiba which has links
with Pakistani security agents.
China says it faces a threat
from Islamists in its far western region of Xinjiang, some
of whom it says have received
training overseas, including in
Pakistan and Afghanistan.
But China remains a close ally
of Pakistan and says it supports
and appreciates Islamabad’s efforts to ﬁght terrorism. China
declined a previous Indian proposal to hold exercises in the Rajasthan desert, which also shares
a border with Pakistan.
“The India-China joint operations are meant to open a channel
of communication between soldiers at the medium- and lowlevels,” said Srikanth Kondapalli,
a China specialist at New Delhi’s
Jawaharlal Nehru University.
“It builds a bit of trust, especially after the Chumar incident.”
Measures for border calm agreed
Days after a standoff along the
border in Ladakh region, India and
China have agreed to hold regular
interaction between their army
headquarters and field commands
among other major measures
to aid in “timely and effective
management of situations that
may arise on the border”.
Both sides also agreed to have
more meeting points along the
over 4,000km border and more
telecommunication linkages
between their forward posts
during a meeting of the Working
Mechanism for Consultation and
Co-ordination on India-China
Border Affairs that was held in New
Delhi on Thursday and yesterday.
Both sides “discussed various
issues pertaining to the
maintenance of peace and
tranquility in the border areas
following the successful
termination of the recent standoff
in the Western Sector”, a ministry
of external affairs statement said
yesterday.
An AIADMK worker flashes a victory sign and carries an image of Jayalalithaa as supporters set off fireworks in Chennai yesterday after the Supreme Court granted her bail.
Supreme Court grants
Jaya bail in graft case
Agencies
New Delhi
T
he
Supreme
Court
granted bail yesterday to
former Tamil Nadu chief
minister Jayalalithaa Jayaram, a
ruling that sparked jubilation in
her home state.
Jayalalithaa, 66, was convicted last month of having land,
gold and other assets vastly
exceeding her income in a case
that had dragged on for nearly
two decades, and sentenced to
four years in jail.
The Supreme Court ruled
that hugely popular Jayalalithaa, known as “Amma” or
“mother” to adoring supporters, could be freed on bail pending an appeal against her conviction.
“She’s been given conditional
bail,” senior lawyer Subramanian Swamy, a former friend of
Jayalalithaa who ﬁled the cor-
ruption case, told reporters.
Jayalalithaa’s
supporters
danced joyously, waving their
arms, ﬂashing victory signs and
shouting “Amma, Amma” in
New Delhi and in Tamil Nadu,
after the court’s decision.
Following her conviction,
Jayalalithaa, head of the AIADMK or All India Anna Dravida
Munnetra Kazhagam party, was
obliged by law to step down as
chief minister.
She was replaced by a loyal
follower at a swearing-in ceremony where many cabinet
members sobbed into handkerchiefs in an emotional display
of ﬁdelity.
The Supreme Court insisted
in exchange for granting Jayalalithaa bail that the politician—
nicknamed the “iron butterﬂy”
for her ﬁrm rule—appeal to her
supporters not to resort to violence over her case.
Many of her supporters
staged protests and some even
committed suicide in the days
after her conviction, Tamil
Nadu police say.
The court yesterday also ordered Jayalalithaa’s case be
heard swiftly, saying all her appeal papers must be lodged with
the Supreme Court by December 18.
“If the paperwork is not ﬁled
within two months, then we
won’t give you even a single
day more,” the Supreme Court
bench headed by Chief Justice
H L Dattu said.
After receiving the documents in December, Dattu said
he would tell the appeal court in
Karnataka to deal with the case
within three months, saying
the case, ﬁrst ﬁled in 1997, had
dragged on too long.
Along with Jayalalithaa, the
three others convicted in the
case, including her former aide
Sasikala Natarajan, also got bail.
Jayalalithaa later appealed
to her party members to main-
tain calm and not to comment
about the judiciary, its procedures or the judge who convicted her, and to maintain law
and order.
The bail ruling came as the
AIADMK celebrated its 43rd
anniversary, and was greeted
with jubilation by the party.
AIADMK cadres assembled
outside the party headquarters
in Chennai and danced in joy.
They burst crackers and distributed sweets.
“It is Diwali day for us,” a party worker said.
“We are very happy at the
Supreme Court’s order. Our
prayers have been answered.
The real Diwali for us is today,”
AIADMK MP P Kumar said.
Similar scenes were witnessed in Salem, Karur and Tuticorin.
Jayalalithaa had moved the
Supreme Court on October 9,
two days after the Karnataka
High Court refused her bail.
At her sentencing last month,
Jayalalithaa was also ﬁned a
massive 1bn rupees ($16mn) for
illegally amassing wealth—including gold, properties, shoes
and saris.
Politicians have been rarely
convicted of corruption in India
despite widespread public anger over endemic graft at every
level of life.
The regional leader has garnered huge support with her
state-run canteens serving
nutritious food at low cost as
well as election freebies including electric blenders, goats and
small amounts of gold.
Court officials said it may
take until today for paperwork
to be ready for Jayalalithaa’s release from jail in Bangalore. Her
case was shifted to Karnataka to
ensure a fair trial.
The AIADMK emerged as
the third-biggest force in the
national parliament after May
elections.
With seizures up, gold smuggling loses its shine
Reuters
Mumbai
G
A customs officer displays seized gold bars at the international
airport in Kolkata in this November 19, 2013 file photo.
old smuggling into India, the world’s secondbiggest consumer of the
precious metal, is becoming
more risky for couriers following a surge in seizures and less
proﬁtable for the gangs behind
the practice.
After being caught off guard
by a jump in smuggling on the
back of a hike in import duty last
year, government agencies have
stepped up seizures to the extent that couriers are demanding
more money to carry in gold, according to customs intelligence
officials and an industry analyst.
At the same time, a drop in
the gap between local and global prices also means there is
less proﬁt to be made by smuggling in gold, giving banks more
business and higher revenue for
a government struggling to rein
in a ﬁscal deﬁcit.
“Gold smuggling was highly
proﬁtable ... but now with the
drop in premiums and tight security, legal imports are increasing,” said Milind Lanjewar, additional commissioner of customs
intelligence at Mumbai international airport.
Seizures at the airport, one of
India’s biggest hubs, jumped almost nine fold to 604kg in the
period running from April to
September 2014 against 70kg in
the same period a year ago.
Customs and police have also
got wise to some of the tricks
used to bring in gold, such as
adopting the methods used by
drug smugglers by getting human mules to swallow nuggets
or in one case hiding gold bars in
dead cows.
“The risk of seizures has risen.
Carriers are now demanding
287 rupees ($4.70) per 10 gram
compared to 150 rupees last
year,” said Sudheesh Nambiath,
a senior analyst at consultancy
Thomson Reuters GFMS. Based
on the estimate, a courier bringing in 1kg of gold currently worth
around $40,000 at world prices
could earn $470 if not caught.
A customs official, who declined to be named, said smugglers risked a jail term of up
to seven years, though he said
such a penalty was rare and the
main deterrent was confiscating gold.
“Gold smuggling was highly
profitable ... but now with
the drop in premiums and
tight security, legal imports
are increasing”
Premiums have crashed to
around $12 an ounce over London prices, compared to a record
of $160 last year after the imposition of a record high 10% import duty.
“Smuggled gold is still landing
in the country, but the pace has
been moderating due to lower
premiums,” said Daman Prakash
Rathod, director with Chennai-
based wholesaler MNC Bullion.
On other hand, India’s legal
gold imports surged 450% in
September from a year ago to
$3.75bn.
“It is difficult to quantify, but
certainly smuggling has gone
down,” said a leading gold dealer
based in Dubai, one of the main
sources of gold for smugglers to
India.
The World Gold Council has
estimated about 200 tonnes
will be smuggled into India in
2014, versus 150-200 tonnes
last year.
According to the industry
body, Indian gold demand was
974.8 tonnes last year, second
only to China.
But a Mumbai-based bank
dealer said with little prospect of premiums rebounding
smuggling in the December
quarter could be half of last
year’s level based on the legal
imports coming in for a period
when demand rises due to festivals like Diwali.
Indian customs officials appear to have got more on top of
gold smuggling.
“Until 2012, intelligence agencies were focused on the narcotics trade as gold smuggling was
negligible,” said a government
official who did not want to be
named. “As smuggling rose,
agencies gradually built a network of informers.”
Whistleblowers who help bust
illegal gold shipments can get a
bigger reward in India than those
who help catch cocaine and heroin smugglers.
A jeweller based in Kochi in
Kerala said that with gold smuggling already falling, any move to
cut India’s import duty even just
by 2-3 percentage points would
make the practice barely worthwhile.
Some in the gold industry expect that the duty could be cut
after the peak demand season
ends in December, while others
argue a reduction is unlikely before March next year.
14
Gulf Times
Saturday, October 18, 2014
LATIN AMERICA
Kerry praises
Cuba’s role
in Ebola ﬁght
Obama has recently relaxed
travel rules to Cuba, but the
US maintains a hard line
against the country located
145km off the Florida coast
AFP
Washington
S
ecretary of State John Kerry
yesterday paid a rare US
compliment to Cuba, acknowledging the communist island nation’s role in the global
ﬁght against Ebola in West Africa.
“Already we are seeing nations
large and small stepping up in impressive ways to make a contribution on the frontlines,” Kerry told
foreign diplomats in Washington
as he pleaded for a greater mobilisation against the epidemic.
“Cuba, a country of just 11mn
people, has sent 165 health professionals and it plans to send
nearly 300 more.”
The US government rarely
speaks of Cuba in friendly terms,
and the two nations have been at
odds for more than half a century.
Havana and Washington have
not had formal diplomatic ties
since 1961 and the US maintains
comprehensive economic sanctions against Cuba.
In all, Cuba’s medical contingent in West Africa is expected to
reach more than 461.
“There is no country that is exempt from being able to do something to be able to contribute to
this effort and help make a difference,” Kerry said.
“Everything we do depends on
how we co-ordinate our efforts as
partners and how we contribute
together.”
Kerry thanked France and Britain for their response and ac-
Kerry: pays a rare US compliment
to Cuba.
knowledged contributions from
Germany, the European Union,
the African Union, the World
Bank and the International Monetary Fund.
US President Barack Obama
has called on the world to do more
in the ﬁght against Ebola, while
insisting his own country would
be “much more aggressive” in its
response.
“The fact is we haven’t begun
yet to fully meet the challenge at
hand,” Kerry said.
The US is sending 4,000 soldiers to West Africa to help in the
ﬁght against the epidemic and it
has allocated $1bn to the military.
“We are using every instrument
of American power in order to try
to get this job done,” Kerry said.
He also called on the world to
send more health care workers to
the region.
“We need to do everything
that we can to provide these
men and women the protective
equipment and the treatment
that they need,” Kerry said.
Obama has recently relaxed
travel rules to Cuba, but the US
maintains a hard line against the
country located 145km off the
Florida coast.
Several recent opinion polls
have shown that a majority of Americans are in favour of a
change in policy toward Cuba.
Meanwhile, Jamaica has announced an immediate travel ban
on foreigners who have traveled
through the Ebola-affected countries of Liberia, Guinea, and Sierra
Leone.
A government statement said
the ban covered “certain persons
traveling directly or indirectly,
from or through” the three West
African countries, where nearly
4,500 people have died of the disease.
Other countries, including Colombia, Guyana and the Caribbean island of St. Lucia, have also
begun denying entry to travelers
who recently visited the Ebolaaffected nations.
Jamaica’s travel ban extends to
“persons ordinarily resident in
Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone as well as persons who have
traveled to or transited through
Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone,
within 28 days of having departed
from these countries,” the government said, describing it as a
temporary measure to protect human and animal health.
The government also said Jamaican citizens and residents
would be quarantined, in the
interest of public health and national security, for 28 days after
any travel to Guinea, Liberia and
Sierra Leone.
This also applied to members of
international organisations with a
right of entry to the country
Rousseff falls ill after
tense televised debate
AFP
Sao Paulo
B
razil’s President Dilma
Rousseff fell ill at the end
of a tense and at times bitter televised debate on Thursday
with challenger Aecio Neves.
Rousseff and Social Democrat Neves traded accusations for
an hour and a half, after which
she began to complain of feeling
light-headed as she left the rostrum.
“My blood pressure dropped,
let’s start again,” Rousseff said, as
reporters ushered her to a chair
and gave her a drink of water.
“I felt a bit light woozy. Sorry
about that - just one of those
things,” said the 66-year-old.
Just as the candidates had in
their previous verbal bout on
Tuesday, Rousseff and Neves, the
scion of a political dynasty, accused each other of lying, misrepresentation and nepotism as
Customers talking to sales agents of Education First (EF), an international education institute, in Caracas. As political strife drags on and
an economic crisis brings soaring prices and shortages of even basic goods, Venezuela’s middle classes are increasingly seeing a future
abroad. The World Bank, which defines “middle class” as individual income of $10 to $50 a day, estimates that just over 30% of Latin
Americans now fall in that bracket, after a world commodities boom brought the region a windfall in the 2000s.
Growing middle classes
face tough transition years
AFP
Montevideo
“
Juan Middle Class” may be
a cartoon, but the problems he faces - expensive
schools, crummy healthcare,
ballooning grocery bills - are
all too real for millions of newly
middle-class Latin Americans.
The Uruguayan cartoon character speaks to the frustrations
of more than 50mn Latin Americans who made a mass exodus
from poverty during the region’s
so-called “golden decade” but
are now feeling the pain of overstretched public services and an
economic slowdown.
Created in the run-up to Uruguay’s October 26 elections by
a fringe political party, the centrist Independent Party, Juan
Clasemedia lays out the woes
of the region’s newly burgeoning middle class in online videos
and on his own Twitter account.
“He sends his kids to public
school, but it’s still expensive.
He waits three months to see a
specialist at the clinic and still
pays a lot of money. Every Sunday he pays more at the supermarket and, to make matters
worse, he risks getting mugged
at any moment,” says one cartoon.
The World Bank, which deﬁnes “middle class” as individual income of $10 to $50 a day,
estimates that just over 30% of
Latin Americans now fall in that
bracket, after a world commodities boom brought the region a
windfall in the 2000s.
The signs of the transformation are omnipresent, from the
hike in motor scooter sales in
northeast Brazil to the rage for
online English classes in Venezuela to the proliferation of
refrigerators, TVs, cars, Internet
access and smartphones across
the region.
But new money has also
brought new frustrations.
“Purchasing power has advanced faster than the quality of
public services,” said Augusto de
la Torre, the World Bank’s chief
economist for the region.
“Our lives have gotten better, of course. But public health
care, for example, is terrible,”
said Cida Alves, a 46-year-old
housewife, as she browsed at the
giant Itaquera Shopping Centre
in Sao Paulo, Brazil’s economic
capital.
In June last year, a million
Brazilians took to the streets
demanding better public services, a surge of discontent that
threatens to unseat leftist President Dilma Rousseff in a tight
runoff election on October 26.
Protests have erupted elsewhere, too. In Chile and Colombia, the anger was focused on
expensive university tuition. In
Venezuela, on crime.
“The members of the middle
class are becoming demanding
citizens,” said Gabriel Kessler,
a sociologist at Argentina’s National University of La Plata.
“Collective goods like education, healthcare, public transport, haven’t improved as much
as access to consumption.”
Because of that, he said,
“there’s mounting criticism in
the region that there’s too much
emphasis on consumption and
not enough on improving infrastructure and public goods.”
The economic slowdown is
adding to the malaise.
Brazil, Latin America’s largest
economy, is in recession, and the
International Monetary Fund is
predicting regional growth of
1.3% this year, the worst since
2009.
That is putting the fragile
middle class at risk, said Olivier
Dabene, a Latin America spe-
cialist at Sciences Po in Paris.
“This group isn’t what we’d
call middle-class in Europe,” he
said.
“They’re still in a vulnerable
situation and could quickly fall
back into poverty if they lose
their jobs.”
And they are feeling the pinch
of their recent consumption
boom, he said.
“We’ve seen a lot of reports
on people who can suddenly afford to buy a fridge or a moped.
But what gets talked about less
is that they sign up to pay it off
in 12 monthly installments, and
sometimes by the time the 10th
rolls around they have to take the
merchandise back because they
can’t pay anymore,” he said.
De la Torre said the World
Bank does not foresee a “backward slide” but is concerned
about a stagnation and the impact it could have in a region
that has grown accustomed to
fast gains.
“We’re facing some difficult
transition years. There’s going
to be tension between social expectations and the capacity to
respond to them,” he told AFP,
saying investment in education
and productivity would be key to
rebooting economic growth.
Protesters grab town halls over missing students
AFP
Mexico City
President Rousseff before taking part in a television debate with
challenger Aecio Neves in Sao Paulo.
they sought to impress undecided
voters.
Latest opinion polls have the
pair locked in a virtual tie ahead of
the October 26 run-off vote.
Rousseff topped the ﬁrstround poll on October 5, with
Neves claiming second place.
Rousseff, representing the
Workers Party (PT) scored 8%
more votes but polls taken since
the ﬁrst round have business favorite Neves leading by a whisker,
as they vie to lead the world’s seventh largest economy and Latin
America’s largest country.
P
rotesters have occupied
three town halls in southern Mexico to demand
the safe return of 43 students
who disappeared after ganglinked police attacked them last
month.
Students and teachers had
threatened to enter all 81 municipalities in Guerrero state in
the latest protest over a case that
has caused national and international outrage.
But they only managed to
seize the municipal buildings of
three towns so far, the government said.
“We don’t have the capacity to
seize all 81 municipalities in one
day, so the plan is to do it progressively,” said CETEG teachers union spokesman Jose Angel
Baron.
In the town of Huamuxtitlan, population 15,000, Mayor
Johnny Saucedo told AFP by telephone that some 200 teachers
had entered his building.
“We are respectful of the protest,” Saucedo said.
Protesters have also held
the municipal headquarters of
Chilpancingo, Guerrero’s capital,
since Monday. Guerrero’s CETEG teachers union and students
plan to march in the resort city of
Acapulco on Friday.
In Iguala, the town where the
43 students were last seen on
September 26, municipal workers removed photocopiers and
conﬁdential documents as they
evacuated city hall in anticipation of the protesters.
The city’s mayor, Jose Luis
Abarca, and his wife skipped
town after the students disappeared and they are now wanted
for questioning over the incident.
Authorities say Iguala’s police
force shot at buses carrying the
students and handed them over
to officers in the neighboring
town of Cocula, who then delivered them to the Guerreros Unidos drug gang.
Six people died, 25 were
wounded and 43 students went
missing that night. Authorities
have since arrested 26 police ofﬁcers from Iguala and 14 from
Cocula.
The students, who are from a
teacher training college in central Guerrero known for radical
protests, had seized the buses to
return home after holding a fundraiser in Iguala.
Long-term investors ready to buy Brazil after election
Reuters
Rio de Janeiro/Sao Paulo
L
ong-term foreign investors
are growing more optimistic
about Brazil no matter who
wins this month’s presidential
election but they say an opposition victory could unleash a ﬂood
of new money.
The tight and fast-changing
election campaign has sent Brazil’s ﬁnancial markets on a wild
ride with big gains whenever leftist President Dilma Rousseff loses
ground in polls and slides whenever her re-election bid seems
stronger.
Rousseff’s economic policies
have been roundly criticised by
investors for tipping Brazil into a
recession while damaging staterun companies such as oil producer Petrobras and lender Banco
do Brasil along the way.
Her business-friendly opposition rival Aecio Neves has promised stronger ﬁscal control and
less government intervention in
state ﬁrms if he is elected, winning the support of most market
players.
Beyond the swings of a neckand-neck race, however, longterm sentiment on Brazil has improved.
Investors are betting that either Neves will win the runoff
on October 26 or that Rousseff,
chided by a very narrow margin of
victory, will adopt more marketfriendly policies in a second term.
“Either things are signiﬁcantly
better, or a little bit better,” said
Jorge Mariscal, chief investment
officer for emerging markets at
UBS Wealth Management, which
oversees about $1tn in investments.
After hitting a ﬁve-year low
in mid-March, the benchmark
Bovespa stock index has since
gained more than 20% and is
up over 5% in 2014 - by far the
best performer among key Latin
American bourses.
Global funds that invest in Brazilian equities also began to attract net inﬂows in April. Since
then, they have received over
$4bn, more than enough to offset
the $3.5bn in net redemptions recorded during the ﬁrst quarter of
the year, according to data from
EFPR Global.
That number could shoot much
higher if Neves wins.
“After we get the ﬁnal results,
then we would deﬁnitely look to
increase Brazil in our portfolio,”
said Ben Rozin, who helps manage more than $53bn at Rochester,
New York-based Manning & Napier, Inc
Echoing other long-term investors, Rozin said it “pays to wait and
see how things play out” but noted
that a Neves victory would sharply
improve the value of state-run
companies that have suffered under Rousseff’s heavy hand.
“Even knowing that the market
would be more expensive then, to
us the economic and the earnings
trajectory would change signiﬁcantly for the better,” he said.
Manning & Napier had been
tip-toeing back into the Brazilian
market since the second quarter
of 2013. The ﬁrm’s World Opportunities Series fund and its International Series fund both had a
little over 6% of their holdings in
Brazilian shares by the end of August, up from about 2.4% and 4%,
respectively, at the end of March,
2013.
Since August, when the death
of presidential candidate Eduardo
Campos in a plane crash upended
the election race, investing in Brazil’s stock market has been akin to
riding a bucking bull, with sharp
drops and jumps dictated by voter
opinion polls.
Though traders expect the
market to sell off heavily in the
short term if Rousseff is re-elected, long-term investors aren’t
preparing to run for the hills. The
odds of a more open-minded
Rousseff administration, they
argue, increased after the strong
showing of opposition parties in
the election’s ﬁrst round.
“This could force some change
on the part of the Rousseff administration towards being more
pragmatic on things like prices,
ﬁscal policy, changes in the cabinet,” said UBS’ Mariscal. “She will
be more forced to address the key
failures of the economic model
that she has been following.”
While these investors do not
expect a second Rousseff government to foster a strong economic
recovery, they believe she could
implement some badly-needed
policy adjustments to rein in inﬂation and win back some cred-
ibility among investors and credit
ratings agencies.
Even those who are unconvinced that the president would
change tack in a second term say
Brazil will continue to offer interesting growth opportunities
regardless.
“I wouldn’t expect a real substantive change in how she is running the economy,” said Marco
Spinar, an associate portfolio
manager on Neuberger Berman’s
$5.5bn Global Emerging Market
Fund, which has about 10% of its
portfolio invested in Brazil.
Still, Spinar sees opportunities
in sectors that have underperformed recently, such as capital
goods manufacturers and businesses geared toward investment
spending.
Gulf Times
Saturday, October 18, 2014
15
PAKISTAN/AFGHANISTAN
CRACKDOWN
PRECAUTION
REPORT
COLLABORATION
ALARM
Taliban fighters killed in
Afghan air strike
Mobile phone services to
be suspended in Karachi
Pakistan responsible for
most polio cases: WHO
Two historic tombs singled
out for conservation
Pakistan records year’s
first dengue death
Two Taliban fighters, including a senior
commander, were killed in a Nato air strike in
northern Afghanistan, police said yesterday.
The hideout of Qari Zobair and Qari Hassan
was targeted on Thursday night in the Borka
district of Baghlan province, said Javed Basharat,
spokesman for the provincial police. Qari
Zobair was the Taliban’s shadow governor for
the district, Basharat said. He also had links to
the Uzbekistan insurgent group Jondullah, the
provincial police spokesman said, calling his
death a “shocking strike” to the Taliban. Taliban
militants did not comment on the incident. In
another breakthrough, the security forces on
Tuesday captured two key commanders of
Haqqani network, the military wing of Taliban
outfit operating in the capital city Kabul,
southeast and eastern region of Afghanistan.
Mobile phone services will be suspended
today in Karachi as Pakistan Peoples’ Party
chairman Bilawal Bhutto prepares to address
a rally in the city, media reported yesterday.
The Sindh government has approved a
request of the police requesting for the
suspension of mobile phone services in
the city, Dawn online reported. The police
have also requested for the suspension of
mobile phone services in other parts of
Sindh as well which the government is yet
to approve. Karachi’s traffic system is also
likely to suffer when the PPP stages the rally
for which it has hired 3,000 city buses while
police authorities have banned movement
of heavy vehicles, ‘advising’ transporters
to take alternative routes. The PPP plans to
reinvigorate the party through the rally.
The World Health Organisation (WHO)
has held Pakistan responsible for nearly
80% of polio cases reported globally. “The
situation is primarily due to a lack of access
to children for vaccination, largely owing to a
continuing ban on immunisation imposed by
militants in the North and South Waziristan,
and insecurity and killing of polio workers
in the field,” said a progress report released
on Thursday. “Issues involving children’s
access to immunisation and safety of
vaccinators must be resolved to ensure that
the programme can be completed,” said
the report, Dawn online reported. A record
number of polio cases have been detected
this year in Pakistan. Officials confirmed at
least 202 cases so far this year, compared to
the previous record of 199 cases in 2000.
The tombs of Amir Sultan Mohammad and
Sultan Ibrahim, located in Makli – once the
largest necropolis in the world - have been
selected for conservation as part of a joint
effort by Pakistan and the United States,
the first of its kind in Sindh. Yasmin Lari,
an architect and chief executive officer of
Heritage Foundation, said the conservation
of these tombs, which are believed to be
more than 400 years old, will really be a test
for any future funding to save Sindh’s rich
heritage from decay. This week an MoU was
signed between the Heritage Foundation
and the Culture, Tourism and Antiquities
department of the Sindh government
confirming the conservation, which will be
funded by the US Ambassador’s Fund for
Cultural Preservation (AFCP).
A 24-year-old youth succumbed to dengue
in Pakistan, making it the first death this
year due to the tropical disease, media
has reported. The youth, named Owais,
was admitted to a hospital in Lahore on
October 7 where he died the following
day. However, the news of his death was
disclosed only on Thursday, Dawn online
reported. Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz
Sharif has taken notice of the incident.
Some 26 more people had tested positive
for dengue in the last two days across
the Punjab province. A majority of the
cases were reported from Rawalpindi
and Chakwal districts. The total number
of dengue cases in the Punjab province
has reached 332 so far, an official of the
province health department said.
Qadri’s party decides
to call off protest sit-in
Internews
Islamabad
F
irebrand opposition cleric
Tahirul Qadri’s Pakistan
Awami Tehreek (PAT) has
decided in principle to call off
the protest sit-in from D Chowk
in the Pakistan capital Islamabad
and a decision in this regard is
likely to be announced after the
party’s Lahore public rally, party
sources said yesterday.
In the ﬁrst stage, PAT has
rolled up 500 tents this week
erected in front of Parliament
House calling it a “security risk”
hence giving control of the area
to the police. Analysts believe
that PAT’s decision would be fatal for the sit-in of Imran Khan’s
Pakistan Tehrik Insaf as it is
totally dependent upon PAT’s
strength.
Umar Abbasi, PAT senior
leader and spokesman, said,
when contacted, that the party
had “taken revolution at the
Sharif’s
special
envoy to
visit Kabul
IANS
Islamabad
P
akistani Prime Minister
Nawaz Sharif will tomorrow send his top security
adviser Sartaj Aziz to Kabul as
special envoy for talks with the
new leadership, officials said
yesterday.
It will be the ﬁrst formal visit
of a senior Pakistani official to
visit Kabul since formation of
the government of national unity
in Afghanistan.
Earlier,
President
Mamnoon Hussain had visited Kabul on September 29 to attend
the swearing-in ceremony of
Afghanistan’s new President
Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai. He held
meetings with his Ahmadzai
and Chief Executive Abdullah
Abdullah.
“The adviser to the prime minister on national security and foreign affairs, Sartaj Aziz, will be
visiting Kabul on October 19 as the
special envoy of the prime minister,” the foreign ministry said.
The purpose of the visit is to
convey prime minister’s formal
invitation to President Ghani to
visit Pakistan, Xinhua reported citing the foreign ministry
statement.
The special envoy will hold
discussions with regard to
the timing and preparations
of the visit of the president of
Afghanistan.
The adviser will also meet with
the national security adviser of
Afghanistan and exchange views
on bilateral and regional issues.
“The adviser’s visit is part of
Pakistan’s substantive engagement with the new Afghan leadership,” the foreign ministry said.
Prime Minister Sharif has spoken to both the leaders and reafﬁrmed Pakistan’s commitment
to build a comprehensive and
forward-looking
partnership
with Afghanistan.
doorsteps of people” while continuing its sit-in on the Constitution Avenue and that they
might call off the sit-in but any
decision in this regard would be
made after Qadri’s Lahore rally
in a few days.
Another senior PAT leader
said that with the joint sit-in
held by Qadri and Khan, the entire strength was of PAT but the
media and the public at large
only gave importance to PTI
thus showing PAT as a secondary party of the two protesting
against the government.
“Qadri offered Khan to form
a joint venture against the government which was rejected by
Khan,” the PAT leader said, adding: “It was then decided to hold
public rallies and mobilise people by visiting their hometowns
instead of sitting on the Constitution Avenue.”
Abbasi said that the sit-in
could be called off because Qadri
was getting overwhelming response from the public as he,
recently visiting Jhang district,
noted that “every gathering was
historic and mammoth crowds”
turned up to be part of revolution.
“As of today, the PAT sit-in
is very much there on the Constitution Avenue and the party
has itself rolled up the 500 tents
because they were a security
risk for the participants. People
have been sent back to their respective cities to make arrangements for Qadri’s public rallies,”
he said.
He added that people from
Faisalabad and Lahore had been
sent back to their towns and a
decision to call off the sit-in
would be made after Lahore’s
rally which would be held on October 19.
The PAT leader while replying
to a question said that the results
of public mobilisation were better and healthy for PAT. Instead
of sitting on the Constitution
Avenue, the party may announce
to call off the sit-in but not the
revolution, he added.
A
three-member committee, constituted by the
Punjab chief minister,
to probe the deadly stampede
during Imran Khan’s Pakistan
Tehrik Insaf’s (PTI) rally in
Multan last week has suggested
that the tragedy occurred due to
the non-compliance of rules by
the rally organisers.
On October 10, seven PTI
supporters were killed and dozens more sustained injuries in
a stampede, which took place
when protesters scrambled to
the exit gates in the run-up to
the rally’s conclusion.
The committee headed by
Punjab environment secretary
Iqbal Chauhan dismissed the
PTI accusation that the stam-
pede was a conspiracy by the
district administration. In its
report sent to the CM early this
week, the committee absolved
the district government of the
responsibility of the incident
and termed it an accident.
However, the report held
the PTI management partly
responsible and claimed the
organisers did not follow the
rules of the agreement signed
between the party and the local
administration.
The report said the stampede
occurred when a large number
of people tried to exit the venue
at once. “In the process, several
people fell to the ground and
were trampled by others when
the exit gate was crammed,” it
said.
When people clogged one of
the exit gates, ASI Muhammad
Anwer informed PTI leader
AFP
Islamabad
A
Tahirul Qadri, centre, gesturing to his supporters during a rally in Lahore.
Probe panel blames PTI
for Multan rally stampede
Internews
Lahore
Pak clerics
condemn
IS group
Shah Mehmood Qureshi, according to the report. He informed other leaders, including
Ejaz Chaudhry and Imran Khan,
who were on the stage at that
time, after which Khan paused
and requested the participants
to move away from the gate, it
said.
The committee also said that
the district management and
police had informed PTI leaders about their reservations
but Shah Mehmood Qureshi
ignored these warnings.
According to the report, the
gate was closed - as seen in
videos - after the incident to
let the rescue workers operate
smoothly. Stating that victims
were given ﬁrst-aid outside the
stadium, the report said a large
number of participants, rescue officials and police officials
were present there.
The committee, on basis of
the video footage, said in the
report that more rescue vehicles reached the spot when
the ﬁrst casualty was reported
to them.
On the use of water cannon,
the report said it was an attempt to disperse people before
smooth rescue operation could
be carried out. “It proved helpful as it did push people away
from the gate and helped those
trapped at the entrance to move
out,” it said.
The report also commented
on the rally venue and said it
was improper in view of the
massive crowd. The report said
the available video footage also
veriﬁes the facts presented in
the report.
Imran Khan’s party, however,
rejected the report and said it
does not reﬂect the facts.
Funeral of UN peacekeeper killed in CAR
leading group of Pakistani clerics yesterday
condemned the Islamic
State organisation, amid concerns the hardline jihadists
could gain a foothold in the
militant-plagued nuclear state.
The Pakistan Ulema Council
(PUC) said the IS group, which
has declared a “caliphate” in
areas it controls in Iraq and
Syria, was violating Islamic
teaching.
The jihadist movement, also
known as ISIS, has committed
widespread atrocities in territory under its rule, including
mass executions, beheadings
and forcing women and girls
into slavery.
“Islam and Muslims cannot
support the killing of innocent people and destruction of
their properties at the hands
of the ISIS,” the PUC said in a
statement.
“The PUC... appeals to
people and youth in Islamic
countries to not co-operate
with any violent group whose
teachings or actions are against
the teachings of Islam and
Prophet Muhammad.”
The PUC call comes as
fears grow in Pakistan that
the violent call of the IS group
could ﬁnd recruits among the
country’s myriad of Islamist
militant groups.
Pakistan
has
suffered
years of bloody attacks at the
hands of homegrown Islamist militants, many linked to
Al Qaeda.
Leaﬂets supporting the IS
organisation have been seen in
some parts of the northwest,
the heartland of groups like
the Pakistani Taliban.
The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) vowed earlier this
month to send ﬁghters to support IS jihadists but stopped
short of pledging allegiance to
the organisation’s leader.
PUC chief Tahir Mahmood
Ashraﬁ, in a separate statement yesterday, blamed “heinous atrocities” committed by
the regime of Syrian President
Bashar al-Assad and the discrimination against people on
sectarian grounds in Iraq for
creating environment that allowed the IS group to ﬂourish.
“These are the factors due
to which organisations such
as ISIS are formed and gain
popularity among the public,”
Ashraﬁ said.
Death row convict’s
daughter seeks help
from Cameron
AFP
London
T
he daughter of a British
man sentenced to death
in Pakistan for blasphemy delivered Prime Minister David Cameron a petition
yesterday demanding help in
securing his release.
Mentally ill Mohammad Asghar, 70, was convicted in January for claiming to be a prophet of Islam, an act considered
sacrilegious in Pakistan, which
is 97% Muslim. The verdict
prompted Cameron to say he
was “deeply concerned” about
Asghar’s fate.
Asghar was hospitalised last
month after being shot and
wounded in jail.
Daughter Jasmine Rana yesterday arrived at Cameron’s
Downing Street office with
a petition signed by 70,000
people calling on the prime
minster to secure her father’s
return.
“My father is extremely
mentally ill; he suffers from
paranoid
schizophrenia,
which was diagnosed by UK
doctors in 2010. Shortly afterwards he travelled to Pakistan, where he was arrested on
blasphemy charges,” she said
in the petition.
“His life remains at risk for
as long as he is held in Pakistan. I have come to London
today to ask the prime minister to intervene to bring dad
back home,” said the woman,
who lives in Scotland’s main
city of Edinburgh.
Asghar, a British-Pakistani
with dual nationality who has
lived in Britain for 40 years,
was sentenced by a court in
Rawalpindi, near the capital
Islamabad, for writing letters
claiming to be a prophet of
Islam.
Kate Higham, an investigator at anti-death penalty campaigner group Reprieve, said
Cameron should treat the case
as an “absolute priority”.
Nine militants killed in army offensive
An unidentified army official, right, handing over United Nation and Pakistani national flags to the brother of Sepoy Fahad Iftikhar,
who was killed while working as part of the newly deployed UN Peacekeeping Mission in the Central African Republic (CAR), as he is
overcome by grief during the funeral in Karachi yesterday. Iftikhar was killed in an ambush near the capital Bangui on October 9.
Pakistan’s army extended
its offensive against Islamist
militants in mountains along the
Afghan border yesterday, killing
at least nine insurgents, military
officials said in Islamabad.
The army launched the
offensive in the Khyber agency
this week targeting Islamists
holed up in remote mountain
hideouts on the border.
The offensive, code-named
“Khyber One”, comes against the
backdrop of a broader military
operation in the North Waziristan
region south of Khyber,
where the Pakistani army has
been battling to contain the
insurgency since June.
A military source said some
insurgents were believed to
have slipped away and escaped
towards the Afghan border.
“We are chasing them and
our forces advanced and took
control of the areas which
remained in the control of the
terrorists for the past many
years,” said the security official.
This week’s fighting concentrated
around the remote Tirah valley in
Khyber, where militants and their
Al Qaeda backers from across
the mountainous area have been
holed up since the start of the
operation in North Waziristan.
16
Gulf Times
Saturday, October 18, 2014
PHILIPPINES
US Marines
summoned in
transgender
murder case
AFP
Manila
F
Protesters shout “Justice for Jennifer” during a rally against the killing of 26-year-old Filipino transgender Jennifer Laude, outside the US embassy in Manila yesterday.
Militants free Germans
held hostage: military
AFP
Zamboanga
T
wo Germans held hostage
by militants on remote
southern Philippine islands for six months were released yesterday, the Philippine
military said.
The hostages, a man in his
70s and his female partner, in
her 50s, were released on Jolo
island, armed forces chief General Gregorio Catapang said.
A spokesman for the kidnappers, a notorious band of militants with links to Al Qaeda but
who recently pledged allegiance
to the Islamic State group, also
announced on radio that they
had been set free.
The Abu Sayyaf had given the
German government until yesterday to pay a $5.6mn ransom
and withdraw its support for US
offensives against jihadists in
Syria and Iraq.
The group also threatened to
behead one of the hostages unless the demands were met.
The group’s spokesman, Abu
Rami, said on radio the militants
had collected “no more, no less”
than their ransom demand.
Catapang said he had no information on the supposed ransom payment, while highlighting that the military did not
directly conduct negotiations
over money. “We do not negotiate with terrorists,” he said on
DZMM radio.
Catapang said the couple were undergoing medical
check-ups at a military clinic on
Jolo island and would be transferred by boat to the southern
port of Zamboanga, where they
would catch a ﬂight to the capital, Manila.
Philippine authorities said
the two hostages were snatched
at sea in April as they sailed near
the western Philippine island of
Palawan. Last week in another
telephone interview by Abu
Rami on a local station, the Abu
Sayyaf spokesman had the couple speak into the phone to beg
for their lives and recount their
hardships while being held at
gunpoint in remote island jungles.
Labelled a “terrorist” group
by the US and Philippine governments, the Abu Sayyaf is
a loose band of a few hundred militants founded in the
1990s by Abdurajak Janjalani, a
preacher and veteran of the Afghanistan war.
It was set up with seed money
from Al Qaeda leader Osama bin
Laden’s brother-in-law.
It has kidnapped dozens of
foreign aid workers, missionaries and tourists in the south.
By ransoming off its hostages
for millions of dollars the group
was able to raise funds to buy
more arms, and it cemented its
brutal reputation by beheading
some of its captives -- including an American tourist seized
in 2002. The Abu Sayyaf claims
it is ﬁghting to establish an in-
dependent homeland in the
Muslim populated south of the
mainly Catholic Philippines.
In July, a video appeared on
Youtube in which one of the
Abu Sayyaf’s leaders, Isnilon
Hapilon, pledged allegiance to
the Islamic State extremists
who have taken control of large
parts of Iraq and Syria.
But Philippine authorities
say the Abu Sayyaf is mainly
a criminal gang interested in
kidnappings-for-ransom and
other lucrative illegal activities.
The Abu Sayyaf is also believed to still be holding two
European birdwatchers, a Malaysian ﬁsh breeder and an elderly Japanese man.
Last year, the group released
retired Australian soldier Warren Rodwell and Jordanian journalist Baker Atyani after ransoms were reportedly paid. The
two were abducted separately
and each held captive for over
a year. In 2007, the Abu Sayyaf
killed 14 marines, 10 of whom
were beheaded, after they ambushed a military convoy on
Basilan island. The soldiers
were on a mission to rescue a
kidnapped Italian priest, who
was later released.
The Abu Sayyaf was also
blamed for the bombing of a
ferry off Manila Bay in 2004
that killed 116 people, in what
Philippine authorities described as the country’s worst
terrorist attack.
In the past 12 years, up to 600
US Special Forces troops on rotating deployments to the southern Philippines have trained Filipino troops in a bid to combat the
Abu Sayyaf.
The military campaign has had
some major successes, including
the capture or killings of its top
leaders. But the Abu Sayyaf has
survived the offensives by hiding among clannish communities on remote southern islands,
and also replenishing personnel
losses from the supportive local
populations.
ive US Marines have been
summoned to appear before a prosecutor in the
northern Philippines after Filipino police accused one of them
of murdering a transgender sex
worker, the foreign department
said.
The Americans were ordered
to attend a hearing by the prosecutor of Olongapo city next week
in a politically-charged case that
threatens to test the longstanding defence ties between Manila
and Washington.
“The Department of Foreign
Affairs... today served the subpoena and complaint against
Private First Class Joseph Scott
Pemberton for the murder of
Jeffrey Laude also known as Jennifer,” a ministry statement said.
Four other US Marines who
were not identiﬁed by the statement were summoned by the
prosecutor on the same date “as
witnesses for the case”.
The prosecutor, Fe de los Santos, later told reporters she will
hold the hearing on Tuesday, and
not Monday as a foreign department spokesman had mistakenly
announced earlier.
The US embassy did not immediately reply to requests for
comment. Pemberton and sev-
eral other marines were detained
by their superiors at a US warship docked at the northern port
of Olongapo, two hours’ drive
from Manila, after witnesses
told police Pemberton was the
person last seen with the victim
late Saturday.
The killing was the second
major case in the Philippines in
nine years involving a US serviceman. Laude, 26, was found
dead in a hotel bathroom early
Sunday, shortly after checking in
with the suspect.
Police said the victim was
found half-naked on the bathroom ﬂoor with more than a
dozen bruises, cuts and bite
marks. They said the victim had
died from “asphyxia by drowning”.
The killing has forced the
Philippine government to defend
itself from criticism that it was
not doing enough to seek justice
for the Filipino victim.
“The Department of Foreign
Affairs is committed to working
with other government agencies in the pursuit of justice,” the
statement said yesterday.
Pemberton was among more
than 3,000 US troops who have
taken part in joint military exercises in the Philippines from
September 29-October 10.
Next week’s hearing is a regular prosecutorial process to evaluate evidence gathered by police.
Philippine journo gets
AFP Kate Webb award
AFP
Singapore
M
ultimedia
journalist Patricia Evangelista received the 2014
Kate Webb Prize from Agence
France-Presse yesterday for her
compelling reporting on conﬂict
and disaster in her native Philippines.
The prize recognises exceptional journalism in dangerous
or difficult conditions by Asian
journalists.
Evangelista spent a month reporting from ﬁshing and farming
communities devastated by Super Typhoon Haiyan, the most
powerful storm ever recorded
on land, which left nearly 8,000
people dead or missing in November 2013. She travelled to
the disaster zones of the cen-
tral
Philippines
only weeks after
returning
from
covering a 21-day
Evangelista stand-off between
the military and
rebels in Zamboanga in the south
of the country in which more
than 200 people died.
“On both occasions, Patricia
chose to focus on the people affected,” Gilles Campion, AFP’s
director in the Asia-Paciﬁc region, said at an award ceremony
in Singapore.
“Patricia is already an incredibly mature and talented text
and video journalist,” he said
of the 29-year-old Evangelista,
who works for the Philippine
news portal www.rappler.com
and the local edition of Esquire
magazine. Evangelista received
a certiﬁcate and a 3,000-euro
($3,800) cash prize.
HEALTH
‘Sin city’ begins to lose lustre after killing
AFP
Olangapo
S
tanding beneath shimmering red
lights, bar bouncer John Bunsoy bemoaned the loss of freespending US military clients who have
vanished from his Philippine “sin city”
after a marine was accused of murdering a transgender sex worker.
The killing in the northern port city
of Olongapo, which hosted thousands
of US troops who participated in joint
military exercises last week, threatens
to test longstanding defence ties between Manila and Washington.
The case sparked shock and anger
in the city and the victim’s relatives
are demanding that the accused marine, currently held on a US warship
anchored off Olongapo, be jailed in the
Philippines.
But it also cast an uncomfortable
spotlight on Olongapo’s Magsaysay
quarter, a sleazy “sin city” of nightclubs, bars and hotels -- much to the
dismay of local business owners.
“There’s nothing like the Americans,” said Bunsoy, a bouncer at the
popular Ambyanz bar where the victim
was last seen leaving with the accused
marine.
“Last night we had zero customers.
Right now we have four — all locals,” he
said one recent evening.
Bunsoy was interviewed about the
murder by police, who concluded that
26-year-old Jeffrey Laude, well-known
as Jennifer, died of suffocation in a hotel room after checking in with the suspect.
Magsaysay is only a short walk from
the US Navy ships anchored at Subic
Bay in the northern Philippines, ﬂoating fortresses which house 3,000 military personnel while on joint exercises.
The city’s sex trade ﬂourished during the Vietnam conﬂict and Cold War
when Subic was a giant naval base
hosting tens of thousands of servicemen, but suffered a huge downswing
after 1992 when the US military withdrew.
These days, the place comes alive
each time Americans disembark from
warships coming in for provisioning or
for exercises.
“When they’re off duty the street
outside is packed with Americans.
Their presence draws many other tourists,” said Elvie Mose, manager of the
40-room Jade Hotel and Restaurant.
But the streets are deserted after the
murder, with 3,000 US servicemen, including the murder suspect, ordered off
the strip and back to their warships.
While prostitution is illegal in the
Philippines with penalties of up to six
months in prison, it is openly tolerated
in a nation that also bans divorce and
abortion and does not recognise samesex marriages.
Prostitutes charge about 2,000 pesos
($45), about ﬁve times the minimum
daily wage, and authorities mostly look
USS Peleliu is seen docked in the northern Philippine port city of Olongapo.
the other way. “The entertainment industry is an important means of livelihood for many people here,” said
Michelle Ubuta, women’s and children’s desk section chief of the police
precinct that includes Magsaysay.
“Some may be revolted by it, but you
can’t blame them (workers) because
this is the only way they will be able to
eat three times a day,” Ubuta said.
“When I was younger I was like
Jennifer, doing Americans,” said Benjie Perez, a transgender former worker in the trade who now manages a
beauty salon on the strip.
“There is no denying Jennifer’s
beauty. People paid money to gain access to her beauty,” said Perez.
Kate Montecarlo Cordova, chief
of the Association of Transgender
People of the Philippines, said most
transgender Filipinos suffer discrimination at conventional workplaces.
“There are a lot of trans women
who engage in this work due to unemployment,” Cordova said.
But Olongapo police insist violent
crime is rare.
The only previous case involving
transgenders was a 2013 complaint
for slight injuries, Ubuta said.
Police say prostitutes seek their
help mainly to go after non-paying customers, while their clients
sometimes report thefts.
The last American serviceman to
get in trouble was Lance Corporal
Daniel Smith, sentenced to 40 years
in prison in 2006 for the rape of a
young Filipina he met in a bar on
Olongapo’s outskirts.
He was acquitted and walked free
in 2009 when the victim recanted
her testimony.
Murder or not, Manila is set
to push ahead with a new accord
signed with Washington in March
that would allow US troops greater access to Philippine facilities
—in support of President Barack
Obama’s so-called pivot to Asia.
Hotel manager Mose said he expected the US military to return
because it sent out scouts last year
to inspect Magsaysay hotel rooms,
bars and restaurants.
“They
are
good
business,”
she said.
Govt rebuffs
request to send
medics to
Ebola-hit areas
The Philippines has rebuffed a
US request to dispatch medical
workers to Ebola-hit regions, with
the health ministry saying boosting
the country’s defences against any
local outbreaks was the priority.
The UN has launched a global
appeal for more help to fight the
viral epidemic that has killed more
than 4,000 people this year, mainly
in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.
The US and Britain had also specifically asked the Philippines to pitch
in by deploying its health sector
personnel, Health Secretary Enrique
Ona said last week. At the time,
Ona said Manila was considering
deploying substantial numbers of
volunteer health workers to help
out in epidemic-stricken West
Africa, saying it was “something of
a responsibility for our country” to
respond to the call. But yesterday
ministry spokesman Lyndon Lee
Suy said Manila had for now ruled
out sending medical personnel, and
was instead considering providing
cash and other forms of assistance.
“As of the moment, we’re not really
keen on sending human assistance,
but we are not closing the possibility,” he told a news conference.
“Enhancing capability first (is the
priority) before we can send assistance,” he added at a joint news
conference with a regional official of
the World Health Organisation.
Gulf Times
Saturday, October 18, 2014
17
SRI LANKA/BANGLADESH/NEPAL
Survivors
describe
how sunny
day turned
to tragedy
By Pratibha Tuladhar, DPA
Kathmnadu
M
adan Kumar Thapa,
a trekking guide, is
thankful for a single
moment of decision-making.
“When we set out for the Thorang La, it was still a sunny day
and there were many trekkers
behind and ahead of us,” recalls
Thapa, a survivor of the snowstorm that hit Nepal’s central
mountains on Tuesday, killing
nearly 30 people.
It was around mid-day that
Thapa and his Italian companion
reached the top of the Thorang
La Pass that crosses over from
Manang district to Mustang’s
Muktinath temple.
“It had started to get very
windy suddenly and we didn’t
know whether we should stay or
return. But I knew from my previous experience on the (Annapurna) circuit that one should never
spend much time at the top, so we
headed downhill,” he says.
“As we started walking downhill through the storm ... suddenly there was darkness. The
snow blinded us. We saw some
load-bearing donkeys and followed them, thinking it might be
the right way. But we soon lost
them in what seemed like both
rain and snow.”
It was several hours of stumbling
through snow before they arrived
at Muktinath at around 3pm.
“We had ﬁnally made it. We
didn’t know where the others who
were with us had gone. I felt terrible
when we only found out later that
so many had died,” says Thapa.
Yakobh Megreli, an Israeli
medical student who survived the
snowstorm shares his sentiments.
“I still can’t believe we survived. I thank God,” he told DPA
from the Army Hospital in Kathmandu, where he was taken after
his rescue on Wednesday. He and
other ﬁve Israeli and ﬁve Germans were rescued from a tea
shop where they spent the night,
waiting for the storm to pass.
The survivors recall the storm
starting without warning.
“It was a sunny day. We were
walking towards the Thorong
La Pass and on our way, a storm
suddenly started,” says Megreli.
September and October are
popular trekking and climbing
months in Nepal because of generally favourable weather conditions. The Annapurna circuit,
where Tuesday’s storm struck,
is popular for its scenic view and
accessibility.
“This route is different from the
Everest Base Camp because it’s
narrow and runs along the mountain ridge so it can be dangerous.
And if it snows heavily, there’s
the risk of avalanche and you
can get washed down the mountain,” explains trekking guide and
instructor, Dutiman Rai.
“Besides, it’s a long walk and
there are just tea stalls along the
way where people stop to eat but
no proper houses for shelter.
The lodges with dorms are at the
High Camp.”
“It had started to get very
windy suddenly and we
didn’t know whether we
should stay or return... but I
knew from my experience
on the circuit that one
should never spend much
time at the top ...”
A survivor injured in a snowstorm is carried on a stretcher by Nepal army personnel to an army helicopter in the Manang district along the Annapurna Circuit Trek, yesterday.
Rai says that proper signboards along the route are also
lacking, which can be confusing
to new travellers unless they are
with experienced trekkers.
Tuesday’s incident was not
the ﬁrst mountain tragedy to hit
Nepal in 2014. In April, an avalanche on Mount Everest killed
16 climbing Sherpas, the single
deadliest accident on the world’s
highest mountain.
The Everest incident was also
unusual for coming during the
peak climbing season in April
and May.
“The weather patterns this
year have been different and the
snow storm was also not expected. That is why there have
been so many casualties,” says
Bhushan Tuladhar, head of Environment Department at the
Kathmandu Metropolitan City.
“Scientists believe that climate change will increase the
frequency and intensity of extreme events such as cyclones.
Therefore, we can expect to see
more such events in the future
and we need to be prepared to
deal with them,” he explained.
The snowstorm was seen to
be partly triggered by Cyclone
Hudhud which hit neighbouring
India over the weekend.
“Although cyclones do impact
coastal areas, this incident demonstrates that the mountains are
not safe either. The area of impact of cyclones is far more than
just the coasts,” Tuladhar said.
Nepal emergency team
rescues 48 more hikers
AFP
Kathmandu
N
epal’s prime minister
has pledged to set up a
weather warning system
after a major Himalayan snowstorm killed 32 people at the
height of the trekking season, 17
of them tourists.
Forecasters had predicted the
snowstorm, but many hikers
appeared to have been caught
unawares and were heading to an
exposed high mountain pass that
forms part of the popular Annapurna Circuit trekking route
when it struck.
Nepal’s Prime Minister Sushil Koirala said the loss of life
was “extremely tragic at a time
when worldwide weather updates
are available every second” and
pledged to provide better weather
information in tourist areas.
“I want to assure that the
government will make efforts
to establish early warning centres for weather in the important spots across the country,
especially in the Himalayan
areas and along rivers,” he said
in a statement on Thursday.
Yesterday, emergency workers on foot and in helicopters resumed their search for survivors,
rescuing 48 more people, including at least 14 tourists, a day
after they airlifted more than 150
to safety, officials said.
“We have located 41 people who were stranded at the
Thorong La pass, including at
least a dozen foreigners,” said
Bishnu Bhattarai, an official
at the Trekking Agencies’ Association of Nepal (TAAN), an
industry body.
Workers had earlier rescued
seven others, including two
French tourists.
Thousands of people head to
the Annapurna region every October, when weather conditions
are usually clear.
The Annapurna Circuit is particularly popular among tourists, and has come to be known
as the “apple pie” trek for the
food served at the small lodges,
known as teahouses, that line
the route.
But many were unprepared for the conditions on the
Thorong La pass, which bore the
brunt of Tuesday’s unseasonal
snowstorm.
Eighteen-year-old
trekker
Max Weinstein said that hotel
staff had told him and a fellow
hiker that it was “totally safe”
to head up to the pass, which
climbs over 5,000m (around
16,000ft).
Some industry veterans said
trekking companies could have
done more to ensure clients’
safety.
Tashi Sherpa, director of
Seven Summit Treks, insisted
that four dozen clients postpone
their trek up the Annapurna circuit, likely saving their lives.
“We had been checking
weather and we saw that the
days ahead were not clear...it is
basically because of experience
that we take such precautions,”
Sherpa said.
“We always plan ahead, check
the weather, brief our clients.
We map out help, hotels, mobile network access for them,”
he said.
He added that a lack of regulation allowed companies to take
chances with client safety, with
the added complication that
many trekkers insist on ignoring
warnings and forging ahead.
Emergency workers yesterday
recovered the body of a Nepalese
porter from under the ice, taking
the toll from the disaster to 32,
including 24 trekkers on the Annapurna circuit and ﬁve climbers
on a mountain in the area.
Local
official
Tulsiram
Bhandari said that the bodies of
the two Slovakian mountaineers
and their three Nepalese guides,
killed when an avalanche struck
the base camp of the 8,167m
(26,795ft) Mount Dhaulagiri,
had now been found.
It was unclear how many people remained stranded in the
area yesterday, although the majority are now thought to have
been accounted for.
In all, 168 foreign tourists had
registered to trek there, but that
number does not include their
Nepalese guides and porters.
It is one of Nepal’s worst trekking disasters since 1995 when a
huge avalanche struck the camp
of a Japanese trekking group in
the Mount Everest region, killing
42 people including 13 Japanese.
Some tourists in Kathmandu
said they would wait for the
search operations to conclude
before going ahead with their
hikes in the Annapurna region,
but for others, the scale of the
disaster has prompted a rethink.
Anna Solander, a 21-year-old
student from Sweden who was
set to embark on her ﬁrst trek
in the Himalayas next week,
said she felt “really uncomfortable” after hearing about the
snowstorm.
“I looked it up and it sort of
freaked me out a little bit because I don’t know anything
about trekking,” Solander said in
Kathmandu.
“I didn’t even know that
trekking was like dangerous, I
thought it was only dangerous if
you go for Everest or something,”
she said.
Impoverished Nepal relies
heavily on tourism revenues
from climbing and trekking.
It has suffered multiple avalanches this year, with 16 guides
killed in April in the deadliest
accident to hit Mount Everest, forcing an unprecedented
shutdown of the world’s highest
peak.
Hasina urges big carbon emitters to fulﬁl pledge Lanka concerned
over EU decision
By Mizan Rahman
Dhaka
P
rime Minister Sheikh
Hasina has reaffirmed
her government’s commitment to low carbon and
climate resilient development path and urged the large
carbon emitting countries
to reciprocate by robust voluntary pledges from nations
like Bangladesh to face the
adverse impact of climate
change.
She reassured that Bangladesh would never exceed
the average per capita carbon
emissions of the developing
world.
The Bangladesh prime
minister made the call while
making a statement at the intervention of the Retreat Session on the concluding day
of the 10th ASEM Summit at
Milano Congressi in Italy yesterday, the foreign ministry in
Dhaka said.
Hasina also expressed Dhaka’s concern over the huge
gap between the commitments of the developed world
and their initiatives to fulﬁl
the pledges, saying the global
action of sharing the burden
is absent.
Referring to the Rio+20,
she said the countries had
agreed on a share dream to
have the “Future we want
for all”.
“Despite being a climate
vulnerable least developed
country (LDC), Bangladesh
was forced to divert the country’s development budget
for adaptation and mitigation of climate change,” she
said,adding: “Yet, climate
change continues to affect
the lives and livelihoods of
millions of our people.”
According the PM, besides,
increasing intensity and frequency of ﬂooding, storm
surge, salinity intrusion and
the slow onset changes as a
result of climate change are
badly affecting our coastal
habitat.
She mentioned that if the
world community is not ambitious about climate mitigation, adaptation costs will
be much higher than it is
estimated today.
Hasina said: “Adaptation”
is crucial for sustainable development but critical balance between adaptation and
mitigation will have to be
maintained.
She said Bangladesh has
learned much on adaptation
front and is ready to share
its modest experience on
climate-resilience.
The Bangladesh Premier
put emphasis on the respective “Intended Nationally Determined Contributions”, saying it must be clear,
measurable and veriﬁable.
Sheikh Hasina said there
should be greater “fast-track
ﬁnance” for adaptation,
technology development and
transfer; capacity building;
transparency of action and
support particularly for the
climate-vulnerable countries.
“Green
Climate
Fund
would need to take those into
account,” she said.
Describing various measures undertaken on the climate change issue, the Prime
Minister said her government has been implementing
Bangladesh Climate Change
Strategy and Action Plan.
Besides, she said, her government has installed 3.2mn
“Solar Home Systems”, provided over 1.5mn improved
cook stoves across Bangladesh as well as developed
stress-tolerant crop varieties.
The prime minister during
her speech at the UN Climate
Summit in September in New
York also urged the developed
countries to come forward to
match robust commitments
and efforts from countries
like Bangladesh to face the
adverse impact of climate
change.
Agencies
Colombo
S
Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina arriving to attend the 10th AsiaEurope Meeting (ASEM) in Milan, Italy, yesterday.
ri Lanka has expressed
concern over a European
Union court’s decision
to strike down anti-terrorism
sanctions against the LTTE
imposed in 2006.
“Sri Lanka is mindful that
the EU court decision may
have an impact, including
from a security perspective,
on the large majority of Sri
Lankans living in EU territory
as well as EU citizens of Sri
Lankan-origin who are likely
to come under pressure once
again by pro-LTTE activists,”
an external affairs ministry
statement has said.
The Court of Justice of the
European Union on Thursday ordered the Council of
European Union to annul the
sanctions imposed on the Sri
Lankan group but said their
assets should remain frozen
“temporarily”.
The court annulled speciﬁc
restrictive measures directed
against certain persons and
entities by the EU with its view
of combating terrorism.
The EU had declared the
Liberation Tigers of Tamil
Eelam (LTTE) a terrorist outﬁt
in 2006, following the earlier
proscriptions of the USA and
Canada. The ban criminalised any activity that could be
connected to the LTTE.
The defendants in the
case were the Council and
Commission of the European Union, together with
the two member states, the
Netherlands and the UK.
Sri Lanka said it is noteworthy
that the court has stressed the
annulments to be “on fundamentally procedural grounds”
and “do not imply any substantive assessment of the question
of the classiﬁcation of the LTTE
as a terrorist group.”
“Conscious of the fact that
the listing of the LTTE is a matter internal to the EU, Sri Lanka
is conﬁdent that the European
Commission and the EU member states will take the best
possible decision on the future
course of action to be taken
in this regard, in accordance
with their own legal architecture in preserving sovereignty,”
the statement said.
Apart from the EU, the
LTTE is proscribed as a terrorist organisation in the USA,
India, Canada, the UK and
Sri Lanka.
18
Gulf Times
Saturday, October 18, 2014
COMMENT
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Europe pushes for
detente with Russia,
but deal still elusive
A summit of more than 50 European and Asian
countries in northern Italy offered the backdrop to the
most determined diplomatic push in months to end the
biggest crisis in the relationship between Russia and the
West since the end of the Cold War.
The United States and the European Union slapped
sanctions on Russia after its annexation of Crimea and
its alleged fomenting of unrest in eastern Ukraine. This
has prompted countermeasures from Moscow and fuelled
mutual distrust.
“We care very much about the possibility to involve
again Russia in the international situation,” Italian Prime
Minister Matteo Renzi said in Milan, on the sidelines of
the two-day Europe Asia Meeting (ASEM).
“I think in this moment of very hard crisis around
the world, the role of Russia could be very important,”
Renzi said, listing the challenges of Ebola, Islamic State
terrorism, and conﬂicts in Syria, Iraq and Libya.
He spoke after breakfast talks between Russian
President Vladimir Putin and his Ukrainian counterpart
Petro Poroshenko, describing them as “a step ahead”
in efforts to resolve the Russia-Ukraine conﬂict, which
broke out earlier this year.
“Vladimir and Petro discussed very clearly, very
frankly,” Renzi said. “It was a breakfast without breakfast,
because nobody drank Italian coffee, nobody left their
chair to share milk or coffee,” he quipped, conveying the
intensity of the meeting.
The EU’s heavyweights - German Chancellor Angela
Merkel, French President
Francois Hollande,
British Prime Minister
David Cameron,
European Council
President Herman Van
Rompuy and European
Commission President
Jose Manuel Barroso - also sat at the negotiating table.
Struggling with a ﬂagging economy, the EU would have
a strong interest in resuming full trade ties with Russia,
and avoid any escalation in the Ukrainian crisis which
could jeopardise Russian gas deliveries to Europe in the
upcoming winter season.
Hollande said tensions “weigh” on the Ukrainian
population, on Russia, on Europe and on the entire
world, because of their repercussions on global security,
economic growth and the stability of ﬁnancial markets.
Russia could do with a detente, since its economy is
suffering from a steep currency depreciation linked to the
impact of sanctions and to falling world prices for oil, a
key national export.
However, Italian diplomatic sources acknowledged that
negotiations on defusing the Ukraine crisis would prove
“difficult”, amid not-too-encouraging signals coming
from German and Russian sides.
“So far, I cannot see any breakthrough here,” Merkel
said, before entering into a new round of talks with
Hollande, Putin and Poroshenko, on the question of using
drones to control the Russia-Ukraine border.
Putin’s office also admitted that talks between him
and Merkel had revealed “serious differences in views on
the source of Ukraine’s domestic conﬂict, as well as root
causes for what is happening there today”.
Cameron, whose country is usually hawkish towards
Moscow, warned the Russian leader that he could expect
no thaw in relations unless the Kremlin took decisive
steps to change the situation in Ukraine.
Obama not the ﬁrst president
to fail to meet expectations
Obama ﬁnds his comfort
zone in conciliation and
accommodation, and in
the empirical world of
rational policy analysis
By Aaron David Miller
Chicago Tribune/MCT
A
ll presidents disappoint.
It comes with the job, the
unreasonable expectations
Americans have for their
presidents and the inherent conﬂict
and disconnect between campaigning
(promising people all they can have)
and governing (explaining to people
why they won’t get it).
So Barack Obama isn’t the ﬁrst
president to fail to meet expectations and he won’t be the last.
But he has come to embody
something else, too: the risks and
travails of reaching for greatness in
the presidency without the crisis,
character and capacity necessary to
achieve it.
“Now, there are some who question
the scale of our ambitions, who
suggest that our system cannot tolerate
too many big plans,” the new president
declared in his 2009 inaugural address
to a 1.8mn-strong crowd on the
National Mall in Washington.
“... What the cynics fail to
understand is that the ground has
shifted beneath them, that the
stale political arguments that have
consumed us for so long no longer
apply.”
From pledging an Earth-moving
transformation, Obama has been
reduced to hitting singles and getting
his lonely paragraph right. After
drawing early comparisons to Abraham
Lincoln, Franklin Delano Roosevelt
and John F Kennedy all rolled into
one, Obama has fallen so low that
journalists wonder whether Jimmy
Carter is not a more appropriate
parallel.
Plenty of explanations have been
offered: Republicans have been
unwilling to work with him, or the
president hasn’t reached out to them.
The stimulus was too small, or it was
far too big. Health care reform was
a historic achievement, or it was a
terrible overreach.
The president has tried to be too
bipartisan, even post-partisan, or he
has not been partisan enough.
Time is needed to judge the Obama
presidency on its merits and in
comparison to other occupants of the
Oval Office.
Unlike FDR, JFK or
even LBJ, there will
not be a BHO
Some, like economist Paul Krugman,
have concluded that Obama is already
“one of the most consequential and,
yes, successful presidents in American
history.
But however historians and the
public ultimately rate Obama, the
greatness that he sought - and that
was expected of him - will probably
not be his.
As early as 2011, in an
extraordinary comment to “60
Minutes”, Obama believed otherwise:
“I would put our legislative and
foreign policy accomplishments
in our first two years against any
president - with the possible
exceptions of Johnson, FDR and
Lincoln - just in terms of what we’ve
gotten done in modern history.”
He has certainly not been a failed
president. But neither is Obama likely
to be judged a great or iconic one.
Unlike FDR, JFK or even LBJ, there will
not be a BHO.
Certainly, Obama inherited a unique
set of circumstances, as all presidents
do, and his were scarier than most.
But neither the crises he has faced nor
the system in which he has operated
have been wholly untethered from
his predecessors’ problems and
experiences.
The challenges of the post-FDR
presidency have plagued Obama:
intractable problems, intensifying
political polarisation, mistrust
of government, an intrusive and
ubiquitous news media. This
president’s fate has been the same as
that of many recent predecessors - the
job is just too big and expectations just
too high.
The undeniable greatness of
presidents such as George Washington,
Lincoln and Roosevelt requires
three elements: a crisis that severely
threatens the nation for a sustained
period, setting the stage for historic
change; the capacity to extract
from such a crisis some long-term
transformative changes through
political smarts, persuasion and
deal making with Congress; and
the character needed for effective
leadership.
Obama’s crisis - a complex recession
emerging from the ﬁnancial and
housing sectors - was sufficiently
severe that he could not break it easily
or quickly, but not so catastrophically
encumbering that it enabled him to
tame the politics in Washington as
Lincoln or FDR had done.
Indeed, it is only a nationencumbering crisis, hot and relentless,
that opens the door to undeniable
presidential greatness. “If Lincoln had
lived in a time of peace,” Theodore
Roosevelt once remarked, “no one
would have known his name.”
As for Obama’s governing capacity,
the president did not so much miss his
FDR/LBJ moment as misread it.
Most of the public wanted a way
out of the terrible recession and the
long and costly wars in Afghanistan
and Iraq; Americans also hoped for
renewed conﬁdence in their president
and faith in their government’s
competence. But the public didn’t
seek a reformulation of the social
contract.
And Obama has had neither the
partisan dominance that comes with
huge congressional majorities, like
those enjoyed by FDR and LBJ, nor
the working bipartisanship with the
Republicans to bring it about.
The Affordable Care Act of 2010, his
signature legislative achievement, will be
Obama’s legacy, and in the years to come
it may be seen as a moral and economic
victory. But there are simply too many
complexities and uncertainties to call it
transformative now.
Finally, on character, Obama has
had a Jekyll-and-Hyde problem.
Part pragmatist, part believer, but
always capable of seeing all sides of an
argument, the president has seemed
too often at war with himself on how
ambitious he wants to be, whether on
climate change, tax reform or the size
of the stimulus.
That personal conﬂict has made it
too hard for him to make peace with his
public.
By nature, Obama is not a partisan, a
populist or a revolutionary. Instead, he
ﬁnds his comfort zone in conciliation
and accommodation, and in the
empirical world of rational policy
analysis.
Those can be useful qualities in
many circumstances, but they won’t
make you a transformative president.
zAaron David Miller is a distinguished
scholar at the Woodrow Wilson
International Center for Scholars. He
is the author of The End of Greatness:
Why America Can’t Have (and Doesn’t
Want) Another Great President, from
which this essay is adapted.
“So far, I
cannot see any
breakthrough
here”
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German Chancellor Angela Merkel and China’s Premier Li Keqiang visiting a supermarket after talks in Berlin last Friday.
An alliance that is vast and delicate
By Stefan Braun
Berlin
G
erman Chancellor Angela
Merkel’s podcasts have so
far had very limited impact,
although she continues to
address the public regularly via the
Internet. And just about as regularly,
there is very little reaction.
So it’s very interesting that
just a few days before last week’s
consultations between the Chinese
and German governments, Merkel
chose that medium to comment on
the Hong Kong democracy protests,
saying she was happy that “the
protests have been peaceful so far”
and adding that she hoped “the police
would also react judiciously”
The remarks were harmless, and
it’s unlikely that the demonstrators
in Hong Kong or China’s critics in
Germany took much notice. But
shortly before last Friday’s meetings
began, rumours were ﬂying around
Beijing that the German ambassador
had been called in for a talk as a result
of Merkel’s comments.
As it turns out, the rumour was
just that, a rumour. But the anxiety
that inevitably emerges on the subject
of Beijing’s human rights policies
demonstrates just how wobbly
the supposedly stable strategic
partnership is between the two
countries. And for that reason these
government consultations are also
going to be a balancing act.
Delicate matters like
democracy in Hong
Kong and Russian
aggression in Ukraine
loomed large over
last week’s high-level
talks
Although the links between
the countries’ governments and
economies have perhaps never been
as tight as they are today, the most
subtle of nuances can offend. Maybe
that’s why Merkel mentioned Hong
Kong days beforehand on the Internet.
The reference and its venue were
insigniﬁcant enough not to unleash
open conﬂict. And since then no China
critic can claim she left the subject
unaddressed.
China doesn’t conduct high-level
consultations that include prime
ministers with any other country. Last
week, 14 Chinese ministers met with
12 of their German counterparts to
discuss more than 100 joint projects,
the focal point being the so-called
innovation partnership. But what’s
supposed to sound particularly clever
harbours risks.
While Beijing mainly understands
the innovation partnership to mean an
increased exchange in high tech, Berlin
is trying to extend the term to include
the environment, climate protection,
agriculture, food, but also social
policies, education and democracy.
In the context of the innovation
partnership, the German federal
government even hopes to discuss
whether “a society can only really
be innovative if its people can think
freely”, as a member of the Berlin
government put it. Will it work? The
word is that the Chinese are at least
“prepared to talk”.
That could of course be because
Beijing, like Berlin, has to deal with
worsening economic data, and
the two countries need each other
more than ever. Their economies
have complemented each other well
over the last 10 years, although the
situation is slightly tenser now.
A poll of German companies by the
Berlin-based Mercator Foundation
shows that business conditions are
becoming increasingly difficult and
that more companies are seeking
alternatives to the Chinese market.
That is in part explained by the fact
that many Chinese companies are
trying to compete with the Germans
in areas where the latter lead world
markets. China is increasingly going
“from junior partner to competitor”,
says Mercator’s Marc Szepan.
Espionage plays a role in this too.
According to German intelligence
circles, there are hacker attacks from
China on medium-sized German
companies every week. But despite
all the aggravation, it remains clear
that the Chinese market is still
irreplaceable for many German
companies.
What should in any case be
addressed are the cases of two
Germans sitting in Chinese jails and
facing possible death sentences.
Easing visa requirements for both
sides should also be discussed,
as should the difficulties faced by
German policy foundations operating
in China.
Along with economic interests,
Berlin’s diplomats are also pursuing
political goals, urging Beijing to
pressure the Russians to stay moderate
in the Middle East and Ukraine.
Since Russia has been in conﬂict
with the West over the Ukraine
crisis, Russian President Vladimir
Putin has become more dependent
on good relations with China. Berlin
sees an opportunity there to weigh
on Putin via Beijing. - Worldcrunch/
Suddeutsche Zeitung
Gulf Times
Saturday, October 18, 2014
19
COMMENT
Lech Walesa has a few words for Putin
At 71, Lech Walesa, the
former Polish president
and Solidarity leader,
remains a global icon
and a well-respected
voice, despite some of his
eyebrow-arching ideas
By Marco Bardazzi
Gdansk
L
ech Walesa likes provocations.
If you ask him, for example,
what politics in the 21st
century needs, he’ll smile
beneath his famous mustache and
tell you that all that is needed is a
“microchip”.
A microchip? “Absolutely. Everyone
in politics must agree to be implanted
with a microchip that records
everything they do — complete
transparency. And if you try and
deceive voters, you and your family
will be banned from politics for 50
years.”
At 71, the former president of
Poland and leader of the Solidarnosc
(Solidarity) party - who was awarded
the 1983 Nobel Peace Prize - has no
more public roles in a country he led
away from communism. But still he
remains a global icon and a wellrespected voice, despite some of his
eyebrow-arching ideas.
Walesa’s office is still in Gdansk,
overlooking the Dlugi Targ, the “Long
Market”, the ancient heart of the port
city where Solidarity emerged in
August 1980. This former electrician
who became a national hero sports
a Black Madonna of Czestochowa
brooch on his lapel, creating a strange
contrast with his garish ties.
Just two words, “Ukraine” and
“Putin,” bring out the old ﬁghter in
Lech Walesa, centre, at the 25th anniversary of Freedom Day/Solidarity event in the Royal Square, Warsaw, in June this year.
him, which seems slightly unusual
for a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize.
These words explain the deep concern
of the Poles, and indeed of all Eastern
European countries, about what is
happening nearby. “We need missiles
to aim at Russia.”
QUESTION: Which missiles are
you referring to, Mr President?
ANSWER: If Putin threatens
us saying, “Beware, I have nuclear
weapons,” Nato must be ready to
respond: “We have twice that many.”
Putin is irresponsible and wants to
create havoc in Poland, just as he did
in Ukraine. So, we want Nato to lend
us the best missiles at its disposal,
install them here and point them in
the right direction.
Q: How would these missiles would
be used?
A: We won’t start war, we won’t
invade anyone. But anyone thinking
of setting foot on Polish soil will know
that we are ready to ward them off.
We will defend ourselves. If Gdansk
gets invaded one day, we will attack
Moscow. It’s self-defence, but in
consultation with Nato obviously. But
we will never allow them to defeat us they need to know that!
Q: Isn’t this going back to the Cold
War?
A: What other choice do we have?
We love Russia, but it has to stop
bullying. We need Russia, but a
civilised Russia. They always need an
enemy, purely for internal reasons.
Capitalism, the US, Europe. Now
they’re choosing smaller enemies but
this is a mistake.
Q: Which one?
A: They did not think there would
be so much resistance in Ukraine.
They chose an enemy that was too
strong and they don’t know how to
get out. And to think they got another
chance ...
Q: To what are you referring?
A: We were lucky, it could have been
different. I said this 25 years ago; I was
convinced that Russia would stir up
aggressive minorities in the Eastern
Bloc. It takes a long time to make
reforms, they could have relied on
these minorities riding discontent and
winning parliamentary elections, and
then annexing countries. They could
rebuild the Soviet Union, but now they
have chosen to take up arms and that
was a mistake.
Q: Do you have any hope for
democracy in Russia?
A: Yes but they are 30 years behind,
according to my calculations.
Q: What do you think of the Obama
administration’s role in this crisis?
A: A superpower has a duty to help
organise the world order. They should
organise peace for Ukraine and Russia.
They shouldn’t wage war but help us
ﬁnd a solution. And pay for some of
the missiles for us and for Ukraine!
Q: Twenty-ﬁve years ago the Berlin
Wall was about to fall. If you look back
at the past quarter century, are you
proud or disappointed?
A: If someone had told me that I
would live in times like these, I would
not have believed them. We closed the
divisions in Europe, reunited Germany
and removed boundaries. Now we
are in another moment of transition,
where generations will stop thinking
in terms of State and Nation. Our
country is Europe.
Q: But Europe is in crisis and is
struggling to ﬁnd its way. Does this
not worry you?
A: Of course, I’m worried because
there are forces that want to blow
up the Union. I’m glad that a Pole as
capable and intelligent as Donald Tusk
is now president of the EU Council; I
believe he will do everything to save the
Union. But, we cannot just maintain the
current one. We must ﬁnd an agreement
with common fundamentals.Worldcrunch/La Stampa
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Employer obliged to pay compensation
Article 110 of the Laws
stipulates that the amount
of compensation shall be
calculated in accordance
with the provisions of
Shariah
By Nizar Kochery
Doha
QUESTION: I have been working
at a shop in a remote place in
Shahaniyya as an accountant. I
have no employment contract.
The shop is my sponsor’s
establishment. Am I covered
under Qatar’s Labour Laws? I met
with an accident while changing
a bulb at the shop recently. The
ladder slipped and I fell down,
injuring my disc. I am under
treatment now. The sponsor have
no insurance coverage; he wants to
send me back to my home country
by paying a small amount. I have
no money to ﬁle a case in court.
AD, Doha
ANSWER: Being employed by
the sponsor’s establishment, all
labour-related matters are governed
by Law No 14 of the year 2004 and
accordingly, the employer is legally
obliged to pay compensation.
The insurance arrangement is
employers’ private arrangement to
indemnify the employer only. Article
110 of the Laws stipulates that the
amount of compensation shall be
calculated in accordance with the
provisions of Shariah and currently
the amount of compensation in case
of death of the worker due to work
accidents is QR200,000.
For partial disability a proportionate
amount of compensation will be
awarded by the court based on the
disability certiﬁcation issued by the
medical authority. All labour-related
matters are exempted from court fee.
Amount of
compensation
Q: We are a contracting company
engaged in construction. In a
contract we have signed with
a client, there is a provision
for penalty for delay. Actually
in this particular case, there
is no loss to the customer. My
questions are 1) Is it legal ﬁxing
compensation for damages due
to delay in the contract when the
client is supplying materials? 2)
Is it legal for the client to ask for
compensation when there is no
actual loss?
KF, Doha
A: Under Article 171 of the Civil
Code, contracting parties can agree
terms which do not contravene the
law and will be bound accordingly.
Hence any pre-agreement as to
the amount of compensation due
for speciﬁed instances of breach is
legal. Also, Article 265 of the Civil
Code stipulates that if the subject
matter of the obligation is not a sum
of money, the contracting parties
may agree in advance to the value of
the compensation, whether in the
contract or in a later agreement.
However, Qatari law provides
for a contractor to wholly resist the
imposition of delay damages where
he can establish that the employer
suffered no damage whatsoever as
a result of the delay. The relevant
provision, Article 266 provides that
the agreed upon compensation shall
not be due if the debtor proves that the
creditor did not suffer any damage.
The court may reduce the
compensation from the one agreed
upon if the debtor proves that the
assessment was exaggerated to a high
degree, or that the obligation has been
partially performed.
Any agreement to the contrary shall
be null and void.
A criminal
breach of trust
Q: My sponsor-cum-partner has
ﬁled a police complaint against
me that I have taken all the money
invested and equipment in our
company. We both have invested in
the company and have also provided
some assets. I have been managing
the business. The company has gone
into losses now and the sponsor
blames me for that. He alleges that
I have cheated the company and he
has gone to the police, complaining
a breach of trust from my part.
It is true that while shifting the
office recently, I have sold two old
computers provided by the sponsor
and paid off the dues to a computer
technician, the buyer in the case.
Please advice on the legal part of
breach of trust in Qatar.
AG, Doha
A: In general whoever being in any
manner entrusted with property or
with any dominion over property,
dishonestly misappropriates or
converts to his own use that property
or dishonestly uses or disposes of
that property in violation of the legal
contract, express or implied commits
criminal breach of trust.
Under Article 362 of the Qatar Penal
Laws, a prison sentence of no more
than three years and to a ﬁne of no
more than QR10,000 shall be inﬂicted
upon any person in such cases.
For the purposes of the Article, there
shall be treated as an agent every partner
participating in a common property, a
person who is intrusive upon the funds
of the actual owner thereof and any
person who has been delivered an object
for use for a speciﬁc matter for the
beneﬁt of its owner or others.
A prison sentence for a term not
exceeding two years or a ﬁne not
exceeding QR5,000 shall be the penalty
for any person who seizes with the intent
of acquiring for himself any lost monies
or funds that have come in his possession
by mistake or by force majeure.
The same punishment shall be
inﬂicted upon any person who
embezzles or attempts to embezzle
property that may have been
mortgaged as security for a debt owed
by him or by another.
TODAY
High: 37 C
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SUNDAY
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MONDAY
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Fishermen’s forecast
OFFSHORE DOHA
Wind: SW-NW 12-18/25 KT
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INSHORE DOHA
Wind: SW-NW 5-15/20 KT
Waves: 1-3/4 Feet
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zPlease send your questions by
e-mail to: [email protected]
LEGAL SYSTEM IN QATAR
A mortgage granted by all the
co-owners of an immovable held
in common remains effective
whatever may be the ultimate
result of a partition of the
immovable or of its sale owing to
impossibility of partition. If one
of the owners grants a mortgage
on his undivided share or part
thereof, the mortgage will be
transferred to a portion of this
property equivalent in value to
that of the mortgaged portion
after partition. This portion will,
upon petition, be ﬁxed by an order
of the court.
The mortgage shall maintain
its rank if a new registration is
made for it within sixty days
of the notiﬁcation made to
the mortgagee creditor by any
interested party to register the
partition. The mortgage so
transferred shall not have any
prejudicial effect on a mortgage
already granted by all the coowners or on the privileges of
co-partitioners.
A mortgage may be granted
to secure a conditional, future
or contingent debt. It may also
be granted to secure an open
credit or the opening of a current
account, provided that the
amount of the debt secured or the
maximum amount which such
debt may attain, is ﬁxed in the
mortgage deed. In the absence
of a provision of the law or of an
agreement to the contrary, every
part of the mortgaged immovable
or immovables shall secure the
whole of the debt and each part of
the debt is secured by the whole
of the mortgaged immovable or
immovables.
Generally the mortgage
cannot be separated from the
debt that it secures as regards
its validity and extinction. If the
mortgagor is a person other than
the debtor, he may, in addition
to the defence that are personal
to him, avail himself of those
which belong to the debtor as
regards the debt and he keeps
this right notwithstanding the
renunciation of the debtor.
A mortgagor has the right to
carry on the management of the
mortgaged property, collect the
fruits and yields until making
an entry of attachment over the
property’s registration. Also he
may dispose of the mortgaged
property, but any disposal of the
property by him does not affect the
right of the mortgagee creditor.
Regarding lease, a lease
agreement entered into by a
mortgagor cannot have any effect
against a mortgagee unless such
lease has been given a speciﬁc
date before making an attachment
entry over the property’s
registration. A lease that has not a
speciﬁc date in such a way or that
has been entered into after placing
an attachment entry over the
property’s registration without
payment of rent having been made
in advance, will not be effective
unless it falls within the category
of acts of good management.
If the duration of the lease
entered into before placing
an attachment entry over the
property’s registration exceeds ten
years, the lease has effect against
the mortgagee only for ten years
unless it has been registered in the
Land Registry before registration
of the mortgage.
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20
Gulf Times
Saturday, October 18, 2014
QATAR
GE set to tap Qatari talent for
aviation, oil and gas sectors
By Peter Alagos
Business Reporter
G
lobal industrial technology ﬁrm GE is keen on
opening more career opportunities for local engineering
students in the ﬁeld of aviation
and also double its Qatari workforce in the company’s oil and
gas research facility.
Parmjit Khera, leader of the
GE Advanced Technology Research Centre (ATRC), told Gulf
Times that “One of the central
commitments of the GE Aviation
business at ATRC is to promote
localised innovation and build
Qatari human capital.”
Housed inside the Qatar Science & Technology Park (QSTP),
the 13,400sqm ATRC focuses
on applied research and knowledge transfer across GE’s four
business divisions on global research, oil and gas, aviation, and
healthcare.
Khera revealed that the aviation team is working to introduce
mini-apprentice internship programmes for Qatari engineering
students.
“The objective is to provide
hands-on experience on different engine lines and help troubleshoot the engines by leveraging Six Sigma processes. The
total number of student days accumulated since the beginning of
our operations is 1,170 through
some 62 training sessions. We
have also received more than 350
visitors from schools, colleges
and other entities for sharing
knowledge,” Khera noted.
He added, “Similarly, we are
focusing on promoting human
Aviation training led by one of ATRC’s subject matter experts. Right: View of the ATRC inside the Qatar Science & Technology Park.
capital development and sharing
knowledge across all our other
businesses. The centre brings
us closer to our customers, enabling us to address their requirements through a collaborative
model of research.”
According to Khera, the ATRC
not only draws on GE’s knowledge base but also works with
Qatari educational institutions
and the research community to
develop the skills of local talent.
Aside from the aviation sector, Khera said the ATRC is also
planning to extend its Qatarisation programme to GE’s oil and
gas business.
“Our commitment to localisation is further underlined with
the plans of GE Oil & Gas to double the number of Qatari nationals employed at the centre,” he
emphasised.
Khera further explained
that the training sessions do
not only serve Qatari aviation
professionals but also support aviation professionals in
Europe, Africa, Asia, and the
wider Middle East, contributing
to Qatar’s thought leadership in
aviation training.
“Today at the centre, GE
Aviation offers state-of-the-art
training on six different engine
lines and has a restricted zone
with controlled access for future
military engine programmes,” he
said.
Among the key training programmes offered include line
maintenance, boroscope inspection, boro-blending, fan
stator removal and installa-
tion, engine removal and major
module removal, among others for engines such as GE 90,
CF6-80E1, CF6-80C2, CF348E and CF34-3 for Boeing 777,
Airbus 330, Boeing 767/747,
Embraer 175, and Bombardier
Business Jets.
The ATRC also has a dedicated
On Wing Support Team supporting the Middle East and Africa region, Khera explained.
When asked if the ATRC has
bilateral projects with Qatar’s
Small and Medium-sized Enter-
prise (SME) sector, Khera said,
“Through the centre’s localisation and co-creation model, we
are contributing to the evolution
of the local supply chain led by
SMEs.”
According to Khera, “This is
only a matter of time because
building local competencies in
turn lead to more enterprising
individuals stepping forward
with innovative ventures. These
SMEs can add tremendous value
to the local supply chain by supporting GE and its partners.”
Parmjit Khera, leader of the GE
Advanced Technology Research
Centre (ATRC).
Seminar shines spotlight
on conservation of dugongs
Q
atar University (QU), in collaboration with ExxonMobil
Research Qatar (EMRQ) and
Texas A&M University at Galveston
(TAMUG), recently hosted a two-day
workshop at the QU Research Complex
to discuss Qatar’s dugong population,
their global status as well as current
and future strategies for their conservation in the country.
The workshop followed the signing
of an agreement in July by the three
parties to further environmental research and marine mammal initiatives
relevant to Qatar.
Close to 40 environmental regulators and academics, from environment
research, management and conservation institutes and other stakeholders,
including the Ministry of Environment
(MoE) and Ministry of Municipality
and Urban Planning (MMUP), participated in the discussion on strategies
and recommendations for dugong conservation as well as current and future
collaborative opportunities.
Qatar is home to the largest population of dugongs outside Australia.
Dugongs are large, herbivorous marine
mammals that consume sea grass, can
reach lengths of more than 3m, weigh
over 400kg and live up to 60 years.
Historically, dugongs have a cultural
and economic importance to Qataris,
having been used as both an economic
and food resource in the Arabian Gulf
for more than 7,500 years.
Though long-living, dugongs have a
low reproductive output. They are listed as Vulnerable to Extinction by the
International Union for the Conservation of Nature.
Currently, dugongs in Qatar face
challenges such as incidental ﬁshing
and habitat degradation. Limited research has been conducted on Qatari
dugongs so far and the tri-party initiative will aim to develop the scientiﬁc
understanding needed to inform decisions for their protection and conservation.
The extreme marine and physical
environment of the Arabian Gulf, as
well as the northern limit of dugong
distribution, may suggest that their
life-history will differ from populations in Australia.
In his welcoming remarks, QU associate V-P for Research and Strategic
Initiatives Dr Bhanu Chowdhary said
the workshop was a unique opportunity for Qatar University to lead research
on dugong habitat and conservation in
co-operation with EMRQ and TAMUG.
“The expertise and excellent facilities and resources available at QU
through the Environmental Studies
Centre and other departments and research units in various colleges, along
with various national and regional
partners, will allow the research partners to successfully tackle key issues
Qatar is home to the largest population of dugongs outside Australia.
related to conservation of this indigenous species,” he said.
Chowdhary added that he looked
forward to the follow-up of the meeting, which should advance the journey
towards preservation and enhancement of the species.
He also reaffirmed QU’s commitment to knowledge-sharing and providing expertise for multi-disciplinary
research, education and learning, in
line with the organisation’s research
priorities and in contribution to the
objectives of Qatar National Vision
2030, National Research Strategy and
other national development strategies.
“We are extremely pleased to be
working with Qatar University and
Texas A&M University at Galveston to
conduct research on Qatar’s dugong
population. The dugong species is a
fascinating one, and we are committed to understanding more about it,
while ensuring that it is protected and
continues to thrive in its natural habitat,” said Dr Jennifer Dupont, EMRQ
research director.
TAMUG Department of Marine Biology assistant professor Dr Christopher
D Marshall, who provided the background on the biology of dugongs and
the unique habitat of Qatar, described
Qatari and Arabian Gulf dugongs as
likely “the most important population
in the western part of the dugongs’ distribution”.
LEGAL BATTLE | Page 6
ALLAYING FEARS | Page 8
LME facing
hurdle in US
after UK win
Russia’s top oil
firms play down
drop in prices
Saturday, October 18, 2014
Dhul-Hijja 24, 1435 AH
BAD NEWS: Page 2
GULF TIMES
BUSINESS
Japan business confidence
hits 18-month low in October
Mena operations expose QNB to downside risks: Moody’s
By Santhosh V Perumal
Business Reporter
QNB’s international operations in some Middle
East and North African (Mena) countries expose
it to downside risks, global credit rating agency
Moody’s has said.
Although Moody’s views that potential losses
in the higher risk countries in the Mena as
“manageable” due to the bank’s ample capital
and liquidity buffers, it said nevertheless, they
expose QNB’s loan and investment book to
sovereign and credit risks and constrain its
standalone rating (baa1).
“With the exception of operations in the
Gulf Co-operation Council (5% of assets as
of end-2013), which we expect will continue
to benefit from the relatively solid operating
environments, we anticipate that operations
in the rest of Mena (18% of assets) will face
downside risks,” Moody’s said in a report.
These risks mainly stemmed from its Egyptian
operations through the acquisition of NSGB,
which is now QNB AlAhli, the second-largest
private bank in Egypt and QNB’s largest crossborder acquisition to-date, making up some
10% of QNB assets as of end-2013. “We expect
the political and social tensions in Egypt will
continue to undermine investor and consumer
confidence, constraining the country’s growth
prospects,” the report said.
The asset-quality pressures at QNB AlAhli (nonperforming loan ratio or NPL of 4% at end-2013
expected to increase by around 50-100 basis
points to 4.5%-5% by end-2015) will lead to
higher provisioning needs and therefore lower
profitability,” it said.
The muted lending opportunities will lead to
lower revenue-generating capacity and there
will be increased risk associated with Egyptian
government securities in the subsidiary’s
investment portfolio, it added.
About other Mena operations, Moody’s said
these include subsidiaries in Tunisia, Jordan,
Syria, Libya, Iraq and Sudan, which together
account for around 8% of group assets.
“As a reflection of ongoing political turmoil,
we expect operating environment pressures
stemming from unsettled conditions in these
host-countries to lead to NPLs, credit stagnation
and reduced profitability for QNB’s operations
in these markets,” it said.
QNB has also recently announced that it
acquired a 23.5% stake in pan-African bank,
Ecobank Transnational.
Notwithstanding the diversification benefits
and QNB’s ability to participate in Africa’s
strong banking growth, this acquisition will
further expose QNB to countries where
sovereign risks are considerably higher than
in its Qatari home market. Indeed, some of
Ecobank’s main markets are characterised
by elevated political instability and
underdeveloped banking systems with weak
institutional frameworks.
QNB’s foreign operations made up 42% of
group assets as of end-2013, with the lion’s
share in Mena (including GCC) at 23% of
group assets and in European financial hubs
(16%). Its presence in other countries includes
operations in Asia (at 3% of assets).
QNB started its international diversification
strategy back in 2005, increasing its
geographical footprint in order to diversify its
earnings and assets; leverage the economic and
business links of Qatari customers in regional
and global markets; and follow the Qatari
government into countries that have political
and economic links with the state.
Opec should cut output
to support prices: Libya
Reuters
London
O
pec should cut its oil output to support
prices, a Libyan oil official said, as oil
prices that have slid to a four-year low
this week add to a squeeze on producers’ budgets.
So far, Libya is among a minority in the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, and the only one of the four African Opec
members, to call for an Opec cut, adding to signs
that such a move is unlikely.
“Opec is facing a challenge to remove the
surplus from the market so the price will return
to normal levels,” Samir Kamal, Libya’s Opec
governor and head of planning at the Libyan oil
ministry, told Reuters.
He said Libya should be an exception because
its recent production losses have squeezed its
budget and he expected no impact on Libya’s
production from any Opec decision. “The Opec
members know the security situation in Libya,”
he said.
Libya is struggling with two governments and
two parliaments since an armed group from the
western city of Misrata seized Tripoli, setting up
its own cabinet and assembly while forcing the
internationally recognized government to move
to the east.
Opec meets on November 27 to set policy for
the ﬁrst half of 2015 and despite a slide in prices
to below $83 barrel this week from $115 in June,
many members including powerful Gulf producers are opposed to cutting output. Top Opec
producer Saudi Arabia has been quietly telling
market participants it is comfortable with lower
prices in a move that may be aimed at retaining
market share and slowing the expansion of rival
producers. Kuwait said on Sunday Opec was unlikely to cut production.
Of the other three African members, Algeria’s
oil minister has said he is not concerned by lower prices. Nigeria and Angola have not officially
stated their view.
An Opec delegate from a West African Opec
member said his country was keeping a close eye
on prices but was not convinced of the need for
supply cutbacks.
“I am not sure it would do any good,” the delegate said, declining to be identiﬁed. “We are
watching to see how the market will behave.”
Angola and Nigeria are both seeing their oil
output fall due to ﬁeld declines. When Opec last
cut production, in 2008, they implemented little
of their share, analysts said at the time.
Some analysts, including Sam Ciszuk of the
Swedish energy agency, have not ruled out the
prospect that Opec could still agree to cut its
output when it meets, saying that the Saudi
strategy could be aimed at enouraging others
to participate. “It is likely that Saudi might take
their production close to where it was when the
last ceiling was proclaimed and then start to demand of others to do a bit of a cut,” Ciszuk said,
referring to Opec’s output target of 30mn barrels
per day.
So far, Libya is among a minority in the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting
Countries, and the only one of the four African Opec members, to call for an Opec cut,
adding to signs that such a move is unlikely
ECB officials
call for bold
measures
Dow Jones
Frankfurt
E
uropean Central Bank officials
fanned across Europe yesterday
to deliver a common message
to governments that bold measures
are needed to reform their economies,
raise productivity and improve the eurozone’s anemic growth outlook.
The remarks from several members
of the ECB’s 24-member governing
council underscored the bank’s recent
campaign to accelerate the debate in
Europe on how to get the struggling
eurozone economy on the right track
without relying on the ECB’s easymoney policies.
“The biggest bottleneck for growth
in the euro area is not monetary policy, nor is it the lack of ﬁscal stimulus: it is the structural barriers that
impede competition, innovation and
productivity,” Bundesbank President
Jens Weidmann said at a conference in
Riga, Latvia, one of several ECB officials to speak yesterday.
His comments were echoed by ECB
executive board member Benoît Coeuré, who warned at the same conference that “talking vaguely about
structural reforms, but not doing
them, is the worst of all worlds.”
“While in “normal” times it might
be acceptable to reform one sector at a
time, in crisis times it is not. Fairness
must be a priority. And the best way
to align vested interests is to reform
them all at once,” Coeuré said.
New iPads may help Apple regain tablet momentum
AFP
California
A
pple, facing tough competition in the cooling tablet market, unveiled a new line-up
of iPads that feature its mobile payments
system and include the ﬁngerprint sensor unlock
used on iPhones.
Apple also said on Thursday at an event at its
Cupertino, California headquarters that its mobile payments system known as Apple Pay would
be operational on Monday, with more banks and
merchants on board.
The tech giant – seeking to regain ground in a
tablet market increasingly dominated by the rival
Android platform – said its new iPad Air 2 is thinner than its rivals, with upgraded graphics power
and other features. Unlike with smartphones, tablet owners tend to hold onto their devices for three
or more years, creating pressure on manufacturers
to come up with innovations signiﬁcant enough to
inspire upgrades.
“This should be enough to start getting the
original iPad users to upgrade,” Creative Strategies
principal analyst Tim Bajarin said of enhancements delivered by Apple’s newest tablet.
“I don’t think it has any impact on the general
tablet market, but Apple’s numbers will increase
as a result.” At 6.1 millimetres (0.24 inches), Ap-
ple said the iPad Air 2 is 18% thinner than its predecessor and is “the world’s thinnest tablet.”
“It’s so thin you can stack two of them and it will
still be thinner than the original iPad,” the company’s vice president Phil Schiller said.
The aluminium-body tablet uses a new A8X
processor, and boasts up to 10 hours of battery life.
It weighs 435 grams (0.96 pounds) and has twin
cameras capable of producing high-deﬁnition
videos. The new tablet comes with a more powerful processor that delivers livelier graphics, improved battery life and Touch ID, the ﬁngerprint
unlock system that Apple introduced last year on
its iPhones. Apple also upgraded its smaller tablet, called the iPad Mini 3, which will also have the
Touch ID system.
Pricing will start at $399 for the new iPad mini,
and $499 for the iPad Air 2. Apple will cut prices
for the current iPad models.
Apple chief Tim Cook said that more than
225mn iPads have been sold in the four years since
the initial launch.
But in a tablet market that is cooling - research
ﬁrm IDC says global sales will only increase 6.5%
this year, as compared with 50% in 2013 – lowpriced devices powered by the rival Android platform have been gaining share.
Consumer electronics titan Samsung is a leading maker of gadgets powered by the Googlebacked, free operating software.
According to Strategy Analytics, Android
grabbed 70% of the tablet market in the second
quarter, to 25% for Apple, even if it remains the
largest single vendor.
Cook said the Apple Pay system – which allows
iPhone and iPad users to tap their devices to pay at
retailers – was adding participants.
“Just since last month, we have signed another
500 banks,” he said.
Apple Pay has already reached agreements with
payment processors like Visa and MasterCard, as
well as a range of stores including Macy’s, Sports
Authority, Toys R Us, Staples and Whole Foods
Markets. Apple also announced its OS X desktop
operating system called Yosemite was now available as a free upgrade for users of Mac computers.
The new system includes a feature called
“handoff” to allow people to switch among Apple
devices and continue a task such as writing emails.
On the desktop side, Apple introduced an iMac
computer with a 27-inch display boasting image
quality far better than high-deﬁnition televisions,
and an upgraded Mac mini with a lower starting
price.
“I actually thought the star of the show was the
new iMac,” Bajarin said, reasoning that the performance offered at the $2,500 price point was “a
game changer” given the strong following Apple
has with professionals in the video and photo industries.
2
Gulf Times
Saturday, October 18, 2014
BUSINESS
India to
pay Iran
$500mn
next week
Reuters
New Delhi
I
ndian reﬁners will pay
$500mn to Iran next week,
the second instalment in an
interim deal that allows Tehran
to recover part of overseas frozen
oil revenues that are payments
for oil it has sold, two industry
sources said yesterday.
Iran and the US, China,
France, Germany, Britain and
Russia agreed in July to extend
a six-month interim accord until November 24 after they failed
to meet a July 20 deadline for
reaching a long-term deal to end
their nuclear dispute.
“The process for the ﬁrst instalment of $400mn has been
initiated and the second instalment of $500mn will also be
cleared next week,” said one of
the sources.
Payment of $900mn by India
was to be made in September,
the sources said. It was not immediately clear why the process
has been delayed.
Indian reﬁners together owe
about $6bn to Iran. They are depositing payments in rupees in
an Indian bank. Iran uses these
funds to pay for imports from
India.
The sources declined to be
named due to the sensitivity of
the matter. The payments will be
made using an existing mechanism based on a series of backto-back transactions in different currencies that are initially
channeled through the Reserve
Bank of India (RBI).
On receipt of the funds from
reﬁners, the RBI would buy dollars from authorised dealers. It
would instruct the Federal Reserve to transfer dollars to the
United Arab Emirates’ central
bank account there, after conﬁrmation that Iran had received
a ﬁnal payment in dirhams from
Abu Dhabi.
Japan business conﬁdence
hits 18-month low in Oct
Reuters
Tokyo
J
apanese business conﬁdence slipped to the
lowest in 1-1/2 years in October and it is seen
struggling to rebound, a Reuters poll showed,
a further sign Tokyo may be forced to offer fresh
policy support to recharge an economy ailing from
a sales tax hike.
The loss of conﬁdence follows a slew of weak
data – including a shocking drop in factory output
and falling household spending – and comes at a
time of renewed turbulence in global markets amid
worries over weakening global growth.
The deteriorating sentiment could add to pressure on the central bank to ease policy further although BoJ officials look set to refrain from additional stimulus for now.
The sentiment index for manufacturers in the
Reuters Tankan, which closely correlates with the
Bank of Japan’s key tankan survey, fell to 8 in October from 10 in September when it tumbled the
most in nearly two years. The index was at its lowest level since May 2013, and it is expected to stay
ﬂat in January.
“It’s become more evident that slump in domestic demand after April’s sales tax hike is larger than
expected and companies cannot rely on external
demand either given global economy’s instability,” said Yoshikiyo Shimamine, chief economist at
Dai-ichi Life Research Institute.
“I don’t think the government can proceed with
a second tax hike next year without any stimulus
steps to raise sentiment,” he said, calling for fresh
monetary stimulus and swift asset reallocation by
a public pension fund to boost share prices.
A ﬂagging mood and weak economic data could
complicate Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s decision
by year-end whether to go ahead with a planned
sales tax hike to 10% next year. April’s tax hike to
8% from 5% pushed the world’s third largest economy into the deepest slump in the second quarter
since the 2009 global ﬁnancial crisis.
“Consumer sentiment has been slumping since
the sales tax was raised, and uncertainty is high on
the outlook,” an executive at a retailer said in the
Reuters Tankan. The Reuters poll surveyed 486 big
Japanese manufacturers and non-manufacturers, of
which 270 replied during September 30-October 14.
The managers, who responded anonymously
to the poll, raised concerns about higher import costs of fuel and raw materials boosted by
a weak yen. Tame global growth weighed on the
outlook amid lacklustre performance in Chinese
People cross a street in Tokyo’s business district. Japanese business confidence slipped to the lowest in 1-1/2 years in October and it is seen struggling to
rebound, a Reuters poll showed yesterday.
and European economies. The yen hit a six-year
low of 110.09 to the dollar earlier this month. It
bounced to a more than one-month high of 105.21
on Wednesday after weak US data raised concerns
that the Federal Reserve would delay its ﬁrst interest rate hike.
The last BoJ tankan showed big Japanese manufacturers grew slightly more optimistic in the third
quarter but service-sector sentiment dipped, adding to signs that a solid economic pickup will remain elusive without fresh stimulus. The Reuters
Tankan service-sector index fell to 20 in October
from 22 in September, and it is forecast to weaken
further to 18 in January.
The survey indices subtract the percentage of
companies saying conditions are improving from
that of companies saying conditions are worsening. A positive number means optimists outnumber pessimists.
Abe has reiterated that he was “neutral” on
whether to go ahead with the planned tax hike next
year, saying that decision would depend on the
SIA injecting $110mn into Tiger Airways
Reuters
Singapore/Sydney
C
ash-rich Singapore Airlines (SIA) is
injecting up to $110mn to take control of loss-making affiliate Tiger
Airways, shoring up the budget carrier while
scrapping its regional ambitions as competition rages.
Announcing a record quarterly loss that
sent its shares tumbling as much as 10%, Tiger said yesterday that SIA will raise its stake
to about 55% from 40% by converting existing securities into shares.
Tiger then plans an up to S$234mn
($184mn) rights issue, with SIA buying up to
S$140mn of new shares and possibly raising
its stake to as much as 71%.
The low-cost airline also agreed to sell its
remaining 40% stake in its Australian unit
to Virgin Australia Holdings for just A$1.
Months after it shut down its Indonesian
venture and sold its Philippine business, the
sale clips Tiger’s wings back to those of a
Singapore-focused carrier but leaves questions on how it will secure growth.
“We need to now stem the losses arising
from this joint venture and divert our resources back towards our Singapore-based
airline in the execution of the turnaround
plan,” Lee Lik Hsin, Tiger’s chief executive
strength of economic indicators, including for the
July-September quarter.
With the recovery sputtering and inﬂation appearing stalled well below the BoJ’s target of 2%,
investors speculate that Abe may order a burst of
government spending and the BoJ may oblige with
further monetary stimulus to allow the tax hike.
The BoJ has stood pat since April 2013 when it
unleashed an intense burst of stimulus, pledging
to achieve the 2% goal in roughly two years via aggressive asset purchases.
VW to recall more
than 500,000
vehicles in China
AFP
Beijing
V
A Tiger Airways passenger waits at the counter of the airline at Sydney’s domestic airport. Cash-rich Singapore Airlines is injecting up to
$110mn to take control of loss-making affiliate Tiger Airways.
told reporters in a conference call. Lik Hsin, a
20-year veteran of SIA and a board member
of Tiger, became the CEO of Tiger in May, in
a sign that its largest shareholder would wield
greater inﬂuence. Analysts said the shrinking of Tiger’s operations meant that it had to
carve out a new growth strategy. Low-cost
regional rivals AirAsia Bhd and Lion Air have
ordered hundreds of planes and expanded
aggressively over the past few years.
“They need to address a strategy going
forward because they have divested Australia, they are out of Indonesia, out of Philippines, so what next now,” said Derrick Heng,
analyst at Maybank-KimEng, referring to
Tiger. “Are they going to stay as a standalone
unit just in Singapore? That will put them at
a disadvantage to other players like AirAsia,
which is growing across the whole region.”
Tiger plunged into a net loss of S$182.4mn
for the three months ending September,
largely due to a charge for the sub-lease of
surplus aircraft, from a proﬁt of S$23.8mn a
year ago.
olkswagen’s Chinese joint venture will recall more
than 500,000 cars in China due to a defect in the rear
axles, state media said yesterday.
The German automaker, which has been in China since the
1980s, will recall a total of 581,090 cars, the official Xinhua news
agency said, citing a statement from China’s General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine.
“The administration said it launched an investigation into
the cars in August and the recall is the outcome of months of
work on customer feedback and expert analysis,” Xinhua reported.
Volkswagen – which operates a joint venture with China
FAW Group Corp – has offered to “place a metal plate in the
trailing arm of the rear axles to ensure the proper operation of
the vehicles in case of a rupture”, it added.
Last week, among the agreements signed during Chinese
Premier Li Keqiang’s visit to Germany, Volkswagen extended
its joint venture with FAW until 2041.
China is the world’s largest car market and is crucial for
foreign automakers as sales elsewhere have slowed due to
sluggishness in the global economy.
The country’s auto sales surged 13.9% to 21.98mn vehicles
last year.
Banned: The property tycoon who built India’s first ‘smart’ city
Reuters
New Delhi
Singh: Paying a heavy price.
It was, by his own account, a chance encounter
with a scion of the Gandhi political dynasty that
turned former soldier Kushal Pal Singh into the
man who built a city from nothing and made
billions in the process.
Singh was toppled from his spot as India’s
richest property developer this week,
when his company DLF Ltd was hit with an
unprecedented three-year ban from capital
markets, accused by the regulator of failing
to disclose key information at the time of its
record-breaking 2007 market listing.
Investors wiped more than $1.3bn off the
indebted company’s market value after the
decision.
Village boy turned visionary developer, Singh
may be largely unknown outside India. But as
the man who built “boom city” Gurgaon and
fostered the outsourcing industry – with a little
help, he says, from ex-General Electric boss Jack
Welch – he has been among the most influential
Indian names of recent decades.
His political links, to the Gandhi family in
particular, have also placed him among the
more controversial.
To its cheerleaders, Gurgaon, the city he
imagined and built 15 miles outside India’s
capital Delhi, is a prototype of where young,
upwardly mobile Indians want to live and work.
The outsourcing boom has made the city India’s
third-richest.
“It is India’s first smart city,” said Rajeev Talwar,
executive director at DLF. “Its infrastructure
may be creaking ... but there is a new part which
supports a new kind of life.”
To its detractors, though, Gurgaon is the
epitome of the fervid real estate speculation
and dysfunctional urban sprawl that threaten
India’s cities as populations boom. Water and
power are unreliable, social problems abound
and private contractors have had to step in
where the police have failed.
Its population has ballooned by about threequarters to 1.5mn people in the decade to 2011.
It has been a difficult year for Singh, whose
fate from the start has been closely tied to
that of the Gandhi family. Haryana, the state
neighbouring Delhi and including Gurgaon, has
long been a stronghold for the family and the
Congress party.
After a decade in power Congress, led by Sonia
Gandhi, was ousted in May’s general election
by Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party.
Haryana’s voters threw out Congress in a state
election this week and strongly backed the BJP,
exit polls show. Results are due tomorrow.
“There are businesses that have benefited from
managing their political connections, and real
estate is one of them,” said an executive whose
company works with DLF, but did not wish to be
named because of the sensitivity of the issue.
In Singh’s case, the link goes back decades.
In his autobiography, Singh describes how in
1980 he accidentally met Rajiv Gandhi, Sonia’s
husband and India’s prime minister from
1984 to 1989, when the latter was travelling to
Gurgaon and had stopped for water to cool his
car’s radiator.
Singh, whose family property firm had been
pushed out of the capital by strict development
laws, says he shared his plan for the dry and
desolate Gurgaon region, and his fate was
sealed.
The chance meeting served DLF well for
several years during which Singh - even at 82, a
sharp dresser with military bearing - amassed
3,500 acres of land in Gurgaon, some of it still
undeveloped.
“A salute to the old man to have at that time
thought of putting together the entire site and
not be tempted to gain by selling parcels of land
to other developers,” said Anuj Puri, chairman
and country head of Jones Lang LaSalle, a
property consultancy that advises DLF.
In 2007, DLF listed in what was then India’s
largest IPO. The atmosphere at DLF, one
employee recalled, was “electric”.
However, politics also cost Singh dearly – DLF
has been pulled up several times by opposition
party members and anti-corruption activists
who accused it of improper land deals with
family members of Congress chief Sonia.
Gulf Times
Saturday, October 18, 2014
3
BUSINESS
DJIA
WORLD INDICES
Company Name
Exxon Mobil Corp
Microsoft Corp
Johnson & Johnson
General Electric Co
Wal-Mart Stores Inc
Procter & Gamble Co/The
Chevron Corp
Jpmorgan Chase & Co
Verizon Communications Inc
Coca-Cola Co/The
Intl Business Machines Corp
Pfizer Inc
At&T Inc
Merck & Co. Inc.
Intel Corp
Walt Disney Co/The
Visa Inc-Class A Shares
Home Depot Inc
Cisco Systems Inc
United Technologies Corp
Mcdonald’s Corp
3M Co
Boeing Co/The
American Express Co
Unitedhealth Group Inc
Goldman Sachs Group Inc
Nike Inc -Cl B
Du Pont (E.I.) De Nemours
Caterpillar Inc
Travelers Cos Inc/The
Lt Price
91.91
43.77
98.82
25.12
73.91
82.84
112.21
56.71
48.00
42.68
182.41
27.87
34.01
54.60
31.54
84.32
206.04
90.77
23.27
101.82
90.80
137.40
123.49
83.82
87.25
177.10
87.88
67.26
95.30
92.71
% Chg
1.45
2.41
2.11
3.59
0.12
0.73
1.04
2.95
0.69
0.28
1.43
0.61
1.10
2.19
2.24
3.16
1.50
2.13
1.97
2.61
0.99
1.74
2.66
4.46
2.17
2.62
0.97
1.56
2.21
0.98
8,342,240
20,215,591
4,723,041
26,037,548
4,916,760
3,891,468
4,822,563
9,223,162
8,021,416
10,660,383
1,785,834
13,613,797
10,196,909
7,597,140
17,809,172
5,147,889
1,374,297
2,543,992
12,747,159
2,819,047
2,778,720
1,368,728
2,264,584
3,734,144
3,798,979
2,560,432
2,636,923
3,058,339
3,067,244
1,008,572
FTSE 100
Company Name
Wpp Plc
Wolseley Plc
Wm Morrison Supermarkets
Whitbread Plc
Weir Group Plc/The
Vodafone Group Plc
United Utilities Group Plc
Unilever Plc
Tullow Oil Plc
Tui Travel Plc
Travis Perkins Plc
Tesco Plc
Standard Life Plc
Standard Chartered Plc
St James’s Place Plc
Sse Plc
Sports Direct International
Smiths Group Plc
Smith & Nephew Plc
Shire Plc
Severn Trent Plc
Schroders Plc
Sainsbury (J) Plc
Sage Group Plc/The
Sabmiller Plc
Rsa Insurance Group Plc
Royal Mail Plc
Royal Dutch Shell Plc-B Shs
Royal Dutch Shell Plc-A Shs
Royal Bank Of Scotland Group
Rolls-Royce Holdings Plc
Rio Tinto Plc
Reed Elsevier Plc
Reckitt Benckiser Group Plc
Randgold Resources Ltd
Prudential Plc
Petrofac Ltd
Persimmon Plc
Pearson Plc
Old Mutual Plc
Next Plc
National Grid Plc
Mondi Plc
Meggitt Plc
Marks & Spencer Group Plc
London Stock Exchange Group
Lloyds Banking Group Plc
Legal & General Group Plc
Land Securities Group Plc
Kingfisher Plc
Johnson Matthey Plc
Itv Plc
Intu Properties Plc
Intl Consolidated Airline-Di
Intertek Group Plc
Intercontinental Hotels Grou
Imperial Tobacco Group Plc
Imi Plc
Hsbc Holdings Plc
Hargreaves Lansdown Plc
Hammerson Plc
Glencore Plc
Glaxosmithkline Plc
Gkn Plc
G4s Plc
Friends Life Group Ltd
Fresnillo Plc
Experian Plc
Easyjet Plc
Dixons Carphone Plc
Direct Line Insurance Group
Diageo Plc
Crh Plc
Compass Group Plc
Coca-Cola Hbc Ag-Cdi
Centrica Plc
Carnival Plc
Capita Plc
Burberry Group Plc
Bunzl Plc
Bt Group Plc
British Sky Broadcasting Gro
British Land Co Plc
British American Tobacco Plc
Bp Plc
Bhp Billiton Plc
Bg Group Plc
Barclays Plc
Bae Systems Plc
Babcock Intl Group Plc
Aviva Plc
Astrazeneca Plc
Associated British Foods Plc
Ashtead Group Plc
Arm Holdings Plc
Antofagasta Plc
Anglo American Plc
Aggreko Plc
Admiral Group Plc
Aberdeen Asset Mgmt Plc
3I Group Plc
#N/A Invalid Security
Lt Price
1,140.00
3,134.00
158.90
4,207.00
2,229.00
189.50
820.50
2,498.00
524.00
339.10
1,621.00
174.55
383.90
1,076.00
668.00
1,528.00
606.50
1,195.00
946.50
3,775.00
1,900.00
2,226.00
244.80
358.70
3,285.50
455.60
431.70
2,240.50
2,149.00
344.90
832.00
3,099.00
953.00
5,140.00
4,224.00
1,353.00
1,060.00
1,353.00
1,131.00
174.60
6,560.00
873.00
992.00
441.40
407.90
1,848.00
74.63
220.20
1,033.00
299.00
2,874.00
203.10
322.30
350.40
2,452.00
2,156.00
2,563.00
1,199.00
623.80
921.00
567.00
321.40
1,354.50
305.80
250.20
296.00
798.00
935.50
1,409.00
355.80
264.60
1,748.00
1,319.00
958.00
1,291.00
295.50
2,214.00
1,127.00
1,433.00
1,644.00
362.70
849.00
687.00
3,455.50
428.50
1,682.50
1,065.00
213.10
443.90
1,037.00
494.50
4,186.50
2,569.00
961.00
875.00
683.50
1,365.00
1,491.00
1,222.00
405.00
362.90
0.00
% Chg
0.88
2.22
1.53
3.11
3.43
2.71
1.86
2.08
8.29
1.22
-0.98
1.48
2.37
2.48
3.09
2.41
5.48
1.44
4.47
1.53
1.50
3.68
5.06
2.25
4.10
1.72
4.63
3.73
4.02
2.13
-11.54
0.52
0.69
2.09
-3.56
2.38
7.34
3.36
-0.09
3.01
-0.08
0.98
3.77
1.12
0.59
2.78
3.27
2.95
1.08
3.32
0.42
1.60
1.64
2.16
0.49
1.70
2.44
2.74
1.09
5.74
1.43
1.26
2.30
2.07
1.67
1.27
-2.09
-0.32
0.43
0.03
0.08
1.84
4.19
1.75
1.49
2.46
0.91
2.45
0.77
3.79
0.33
-0.12
1.03
1.95
2.02
1.45
3.40
2.50
0.91
1.57
3.86
-0.91
3.71
4.12
1.45
0.66
-0.11
1.08
-1.45
1.89
2.95
0.00
Volume
8,205,285
1,278,447
13,684,338
909,351
1,275,816
143,333,830
2,842,876
4,117,520
9,144,286
4,078,785
1,675,906
39,119,414
5,402,094
9,156,551
1,886,128
3,067,843
2,549,390
1,090,279
3,856,650
6,434,631
765,151
415,985
18,675,203
3,427,421
4,165,393
6,454,172
4,568,346
5,469,905
8,718,049
15,360,013
29,498,150
6,261,508
4,524,139
1,431,567
701,716
5,644,691
3,268,150
1,740,118
2,266,165
24,607,238
597,148
9,528,028
1,721,731
3,460,746
10,744,662
775,898
165,553,485
22,483,927
3,427,953
9,626,031
654,311
14,360,633
5,236,929
12,842,209
417,769
1,975,868
2,815,107
1,500,790
44,789,802
2,341,408
4,862,107
35,355,308
14,448,910
11,574,615
3,678,691
3,623,407
2,157,715
3,066,419
1,602,105
4,811,009
8,139,525
6,183,016
2,852,421
3,679,396
547,088
22,455,965
2,994,850
1,811,458
1,858,131
1,675,075
19,425,758
5,639,426
5,063,641
3,178,612
47,852,726
9,569,873
12,189,671
77,656,305
9,412,456
1,550,473
11,079,057
5,436,131
1,209,393
3,353,851
4,663,069
2,295,585
8,649,274
741,628
1,316,158
6,258,008
2,493,313
-
TOKYO
Company Name
Inpex Corp
Daiwa House Industry Co Ltd
Sekisui House Ltd
Kirin Holdings Co Ltd
Japan Tobacco Inc
Seven & I Holdings Co Ltd
Toray Industries Inc
Asahi Kasei Corp
Sumitomo Chemical Co Ltd
Shin-Etsu Chemical Co Ltd
Mitsubishi Chemical Holdings
Kao Corp
Takeda Pharmaceutical Co Ltd
Astellas Pharma Inc
Eisai Co Ltd
Daiichi Sankyo Co Ltd
Fujifilm Holdings Corp
Shiseido Co Ltd
Jx Holdings Inc
Lt Price
1,298.50
1,811.00
1,226.00
1,311.50
3,274.00
3,794.50
670.30
816.40
334.00
6,441.00
492.00
4,017.00
4,337.50
1,483.50
4,073.50
1,570.00
3,223.50
1,714.00
448.90
% Chg
4.76
-1.20
-0.89
-3.21
-1.40
-2.13
-1.11
-3.87
-1.47
-1.68
-1.13
-2.71
-1.98
-2.98
-2.66
-2.03
-5.90
-1.15
0.09
Indices
Volume
Volume
12,622,400
3,241,400
4,650,700
4,750,900
5,417,900
3,094,400
7,450,000
8,577,000
12,816,000
1,353,900
7,827,700
2,507,700
3,690,900
8,794,600
1,571,200
4,090,600
12,033,300
2,608,600
13,705,900
Lt Price
Change
Dow Jones Indus. Avg
S&P 500 Index
Nasdaq Composite Index
S&P/Tsx Composite Index
Mexico Bolsa Index
Brazil Bovespa Stock Idx
Ftse 100 Index
Cac 40 Index
Dax Index
Ibex 35 Tr
16,399.55
1,895.25
4,281.03
14,286.03
43,407.60
55,504.91
6,310.29
4,033.18
8,850.27
9,956.80
+282.31
+32.49
+63.64
+233.06
+499.98
+1,206.58
+114.38
+114.56
+267.37
+287.10
Nikkei 225
Japan Topix
Hang Seng Index
All Ordinaries Indx
Nzx All Index
Bse Sensex 30 Index
Nse S&P Cnx Nifty Index
Straits Times Index
Karachi All Share Index
Jakarta Composite Index
14,532.51
1,177.22
23,023.21
5,260.07
1,039.46
26,108.53
7,779.70
3,167.73
21,994.75
5,028.95
-205.87
-18.28
+122.27
+15.79
+2.07
+109.19
+31.50
+13.52
-64.17
+77.33
AFP
London
E
TOKYO
Company Name
Bridgestone Corp
Asahi Glass Co Ltd
Nippon Steel & Sumitomo Meta
Sumitomo Metal Industries
Kobe Steel Ltd
Jfe Holdings Inc
Sumitomo Metal Mining Co Ltd
Sumitomo Electric Industries
Smc Corp
Komatsu Ltd
Kubota Corp
Daikin Industries Ltd
Hitachi Ltd
Toshiba Corp
Mitsubishi Electric Corp
Nidec Corp
Nec Corp
Fujitsu Ltd
Panasonic Corp
Sharp Corp
Sony Corp
Tdk Corp
Keyence Corp
Denso Corp
Fanuc Corp
Rohm Co Ltd
Kyocera Corp
Murata Manufacturing Co Ltd
Nitto Denko Corp
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries
Nissan Motor Co Ltd
Toyota Motor Corp
Honda Motor Co Ltd
Suzuki Motor Corp
Nikon Corp
Hoya Corp
Canon Inc
Ricoh Co Ltd
Dai Nippon Printing Co Ltd
Nintendo Co Ltd
Itochu Corp
Marubeni Corp
Mitsui & Co Ltd
Tokyo Electron Ltd
Sumitomo Corp
Mitsubishi Corp
Aeon Co Ltd
Mitsubishi Ufj Financial Gro
Resona Holdings Inc
Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Holdin
Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Gr
Bank Of Yokohama Ltd/The
Mizuho Financial Group Inc
Orix Corp
Daiwa Securities Group Inc
Nomura Holdings Inc
Sompo Japan Nipponkoa Holdin
Ms&Ad Insurance Group Holdin
Dai-Ichi Life Insurance
Tokio Marine Holdings Inc
T&D Holdings Inc
Mitsui Fudosan Co Ltd
Mitsubishi Estate Co Ltd
Sumitomo Realty & Developmen
East Japan Railway Co
West Japan Railway Co
Central Japan Railway Co
Ana Holdings Inc
Nippon Telegraph & Telephone
Kddi Corp
Ntt Docomo Inc
Tokyo Electric Power Co Inc
Chubu Electric Power Co Inc
Kansai Electric Power Co Inc
Tohoku Electric Power Co Inc
Kyushu Electric Power Co Inc
Tokyo Gas Co Ltd
Secom Co Ltd
Yamada Denki Co Ltd
Fast Retailing Co Ltd
Softbank Corp
Lt Price
3,328.50
522.70
244.50
0.00
155.00
1,893.00
1,366.00
1,389.00
26,425.00
2,309.00
1,527.00
5,962.00
740.00
426.10
1,224.00
6,449.00
324.00
668.60
1,130.00
260.00
1,805.00
5,430.00
42,670.00
4,519.50
17,695.00
5,750.00
4,382.00
11,220.00
5,341.00
601.40
918.00
5,731.00
3,255.00
3,027.50
1,414.00
3,199.50
3,180.00
1,040.50
955.70
10,695.00
1,182.50
645.00
1,522.50
6,186.00
1,072.00
1,944.00
997.70
551.00
555.30
384.90
3,835.00
538.10
178.30
1,303.00
741.20
576.60
2,366.00
2,091.50
1,412.50
3,102.00
1,216.00
2,879.00
2,172.00
3,376.00
7,632.00
4,695.50
13,320.00
230.00
6,005.00
6,161.00
1,612.50
323.00
1,150.50
912.20
1,108.00
1,005.00
557.00
5,785.00
319.00
36,745.00
6,828.00
% Chg
-2.96
-1.08
-1.41
0.00
-0.64
-1.35
0.15
-1.24
-0.81
-1.62
-0.03
-1.26
-1.11
-1.73
-2.97
-1.26
-1.82
-0.40
-0.92
-2.26
0.87
0.37
-2.03
-1.28
-1.45
-1.20
-1.96
0.58
-0.41
-1.91
-3.69
-2.52
-0.91
-2.12
-0.46
-1.57
-1.90
-1.47
-1.29
-0.28
-1.46
-2.61
-1.81
1.58
0.19
-1.97
-1.66
-1.61
-2.12
-3.02
-2.50
-1.82
-1.00
-1.29
-0.75
-0.96
-1.48
-1.76
-2.49
-2.19
-2.17
-0.45
-0.28
-0.19
-1.46
-1.32
-1.33
-0.99
-1.54
-1.60
-2.92
0.62
-0.39
3.03
1.09
1.21
-0.82
-1.50
-2.74
-0.74
0.71
Volume
6,101,000
5,787,000
45,180,000
25,629,000
3,173,900
3,293,000
5,407,600
273,000
5,873,100
8,649,000
1,856,400
21,261,000
29,371,000
8,650,000
1,392,100
15,712,000
14,771,000
9,800,100
38,426,000
9,725,200
1,671,400
181,800
2,050,200
1,363,600
1,364,700
2,299,000
1,440,700
1,837,000
22,015,000
20,052,600
13,042,600
5,787,400
2,719,300
3,517,700
1,766,300
6,493,100
5,683,600
3,932,000
486,600
11,544,200
21,346,600
12,315,200
1,091,000
13,828,400
7,663,300
7,687,800
67,991,700
20,104,700
36,731,000
12,610,400
5,762,000
187,796,600
8,044,300
11,707,000
20,104,500
1,371,900
2,989,000
10,354,000
3,802,700
4,771,700
5,009,000
8,099,000
3,639,000
1,470,100
916,300
402,200
22,233,000
2,895,400
3,626,200
7,606,700
14,216,700
3,133,400
4,024,400
1,895,300
4,420,900
8,792,000
1,142,200
25,916,300
731,000
15,851,900
SENSEX
Company Name
Zee Entertainment Enterprise
Wipro Ltd
Ultratech Cement Ltd
Tech Mahindra Ltd
Tata Steel Ltd
Tata Power Co Ltd
Tata Motors Ltd
Tata Consultancy Svcs Ltd
Sun Pharmaceutical Indus
State Bank Of India
Sesa Sterlite Ltd
Reliance Industries Ltd
Punjab National Bank
Power Grid Corp Of India Ltd
Oil & Natural Gas Corp Ltd
Ntpc Ltd
Nmdc Ltd
Maruti Suzuki India Ltd
Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd
Lupin Ltd
Larsen & Toubro Ltd
Kotak Mahindra Bank Ltd
Jindal Steel & Power Ltd
Itc Ltd
Infosys Ltd
Indusind Bank Ltd
Idfc Ltd
Icici Bank Ltd
Housing Development Finance
Hindustan Unilever Ltd
Hindalco Industries Ltd
Hero Motocorp Ltd
Hdfc Bank Limited
Hcl Technologies Ltd
Grasim Industries Ltd
Gail India Ltd
Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories
Dlf Ltd
Coal India Ltd
Cipla Ltd
Cairn India Ltd
Bharti Airtel Ltd
Bharat Petroleum Corp Ltd
Bharat Heavy Electricals
Bank Of Baroda
Bajaj Auto Ltd
Axis Bank Ltd
Asian Paints Ltd
Ambuja Cements Ltd
Acc Ltd
Lt Price
322.40
565.90
2,317.75
2,273.00
447.55
84.95
475.80
2,441.15
798.35
2,521.90
232.65
937.90
919.80
134.10
397.10
140.95
159.85
2,941.10
1,253.75
1,347.15
1,452.90
1,000.05
147.65
353.95
3,851.65
660.85
139.60
1,505.20
997.15
726.30
139.45
2,873.90
885.25
1,505.50
3,279.40
447.90
2,918.60
110.60
350.65
595.60
276.25
395.95
666.75
226.75
871.95
2,373.20
401.60
640.10
207.35
1,406.85
% Chg
3.28
-1.29
0.01
-1.40
1.92
1.43
-1.65
-8.85
0.21
2.25
-2.72
0.74
0.31
0.11
0.00
1.95
1.43
0.14
2.84
2.14
2.05
0.85
-2.32
0.43
-0.35
2.40
2.05
3.06
1.62
-0.59
-2.07
2.68
3.07
-9.08
1.56
-0.39
0.47
0.23
0.59
2.93
0.95
2.01
0.08
3.26
0.49
0.41
2.02
2.27
0.56
2.22
Europe markets rebound
from week of turbulence
Volume
5,487,365
3,424,719
679,094
2,084,206
7,711,448
5,609,796
9,981,048
5,521,927
1,816,857
1,730,001
6,136,485
3,829,317
842,654
3,281,756
4,741,390
5,105,034
4,784,027
311,957
817,127
538,386
2,243,070
1,155,395
5,492,951
7,946,242
1,073,607
1,803,370
5,996,585
2,873,053
3,017,389
787,266
14,329,685
1,143,603
2,949,126
4,603,200
69,001
1,007,267
369,383
37,743,428
2,085,115
1,858,697
3,140,380
4,762,018
827,028
4,605,913
1,456,855
375,007
5,402,672
1,285,127
1,440,634
349,742
uropean stock markets surged
yesterday as investors snapped
up bargains, ending a rollercoaster week marked by alarm over
fading global growth, a reemergence of
eurozone tensions and the spreading
Ebola virus.
Having already mounted a robust
late recovery on Thursday following
sharp losses earlier in the session, indices shot higher to claw back much of
the week’s losses by the end yesterday.
“European equity markets managed
to hold on to early gains during the last
session of the week with most major
benchmark indices posting healthy
gains throughout the day,” said Kash
Kamal from Sucden Financial.
London’s benchmark FTSE 100 index climbed 1.85% compared to Thursday’s close to end the week at 6,310.29
points.
In Paris, the CAC 40 jumped 2.92%
to 4,033.18 points, while Frankfurt’s
DAX index surged 3.12% to 8,850.27
points.
The Athens market closed up 7.21%
after sizeable falls this week, sparked
by concerns Greece could be set for
a fresh ﬁnancial crisis after it says it
hopes to exit its IMF bailout plan early.
Prime Minister Antonis Samaras yesterday reiterated that Greece does not
need the aid programme, but said it is
open to keeping a precautionary credit
line with the eurozone’s bailout fund.
Investors took heart from comments
from ECB board member Benoit Coeure, who said the eurozone’s lender
will begin buying private-sector debt
instruments within days as part of its
drive to beef up the bank’s assets and
channel money into the economy.
Markets were gripped by panic earlier in the week after weak eurozone
inﬂation data, poor demand at a Spanish bond auction and negative ﬁgures
from top eurozone economy Germany
added to fears the bloc could slip into
recession.
Speaking on Friday, IMF chief Christine Lagarde labelled the slump in global markets “a correction and maybe at
this stage an over-reaction”.
“Financial markets have endured
some brutal swings in price action
over the past few days, as uncertainty
has built up over the outlook for global
growth,” said Michael Hewson, chief
market analyst at traders CMC Markets UK.
A trader reacts at the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. The DAX index surged 3.12% to
8,850.27 points yesterday.
US stocks also staged a comeback,
with the Dow Jones Industrial Average rising 1.81% to 16,408.73 points in
mid-afternoon trading.
The broad-based S&P 500 gained
1.57% to 1,892.07, while the tech-rich
Nasdaq Composite Index jumped
1.44% to 4,277.94.
Shares in carmakers gained yesterday after European auto trade data
showed that sales of vehicles rose by
6.4% in September on a 12-month basis.
Shares in Volkswagen climbed 4.51%
to €160 as it extended its lead in European car sales, while shares in Peugeot
jumped 6.99% to €9.28, and Renault
rose 3.99% to €54.47.
Meanwhile shares in Rolls-Royce
slumped as the group issued a proﬁt
warning.
Rolls tumbled 11.54% to close at 832
pence after the British engine-maker
announced yesterday that it was slashing its earnings forecasts partly as result of Western trade sanctions against
Russia, causing a share price collapse.
Rolls said underlying proﬁt in 2015
would be ﬂat at best compared with
2014, but could come in 3% lower,
rather than
Shoemaker to the stars Jimmy
Choo meanwhile stepped out yester-
HONG KONG
HONG KONG
Company Name
Aluminum Corp Of China Ltd-H
Bank Of East Asia
Bank Of China Ltd-H
Bank Of Communications Co-H
Belle International Holdings
Boc Hong Kong Holdings Ltd
Cathay Pacific Airways
Cheung Kong Holdings Ltd
China Coal Energy Co-H
China Construction Bank-H
China Life Insurance Co-H
China Merchants Hldgs Intl
China Mobile Ltd
China Overseas Land & Invest
China Petroleum & Chemical-H
China Resources Enterprise
China Resources Land Ltd
China Resources Power Holdin
China Shenhua Energy Co-H
China Unicom Hong Kong Ltd
Citic Ltd
Clp Holdings Ltd
Cnooc Ltd
Cosco Pacific Ltd
Esprit Holdings Ltd
Fih Mobile Ltd
Hang Lung Properties Ltd
Hang Seng Bank Ltd
Henderson Land Development
day on the London stock market in a
ﬂoat valuing it at £545.6mn ($877mn,
€685mn).
Jimmy Choo, whose celebrity fans
include Kate Middleton, Michelle
Obama, Nicole Kidman and Lady Gaga,
began conditional dealings with shares
priced at 140 pence on the London
Stock Exchange, rising to 144 pence by
the end of the day.
The IPO is aimed at raising cash to
help the shoemaker tap further into
strong Asian demand for luxury goods,
particularly in China and Japan.
Shares in French digital security
company Gemalto plunged 10.97% to
€59.41 in what one trader explained
was a reaction to news that Apple is
developing a way to directly integrate
SIM cards into its new iPad, allowing
users to switch subscriptions by downloads instead of needing a new chip.
In foreign exchange, the euro fell to
$1.2756 from $1.2809 late in New York
on Thursday.
The European single currency
dipped to 79.27 British pence from
79.59 pence.
The pound was worth $1.6086, up
from $1.6091 on Thursday.
On the London Bullion Market, the
price of gold slipped to $1,234.25 an
ounce from $1,237.75.
Lt Price
3.12
31.10
3.51
5.49
8.58
25.10
13.70
131.00
4.68
5.51
21.40
23.55
91.95
21.05
6.55
18.40
17.74
20.75
20.80
11.42
13.24
64.95
12.46
10.22
10.20
3.95
22.80
128.60
51.70
% Chg
-1.58
0.16
0.29
1.29
-0.46
1.21
-1.30
1.31
1.30
0.00
0.71
-0.84
0.55
0.24
0.61
0.00
0.80
0.97
-0.24
0.71
1.07
-0.46
3.83
0.00
2.20
1.02
0.22
0.63
0.39
Volume
12,289,240
1,121,027
314,488,970
56,741,585
37,492,842
7,919,711
8,368,102
3,842,193
43,517,301
255,206,941
21,505,233
3,072,631
12,611,911
31,174,148
95,395,679
2,315,251
15,791,920
15,931,209
38,344,585
38,915,323
7,741,743
2,180,108
131,952,951
3,485,493
4,745,478
6,928,668
3,012,515
879,805
2,505,162
Company Name
Hong Kong & China Gas
Hong Kong Exchanges & Clear
Hsbc Holdings Plc
Hutchison Whampoa Ltd
Ind & Comm Bk Of China-H
Li & Fung Ltd
Mtr Corp
New World Development
Petrochina Co Ltd-H
Ping An Insurance Group Co-H
Power Assets Holdings Ltd
Sino Land Co
Sun Hung Kai Properties
Swire Pacific Ltd-A
Tencent Holdings Ltd
Wharf Holdings Ltd
Lt Price
17.70
173.70
77.90
95.95
4.92
9.09
30.45
9.40
9.38
58.85
72.00
12.40
113.40
100.70
112.70
55.35
% Chg
-1.01
0.87
0.32
1.00
0.82
1.00
-0.16
0.86
0.97
1.20
-0.21
0.65
0.00
1.21
-0.27
0.91
Volume
9,506,661
7,442,012
27,568,112
4,256,756
299,543,818
18,885,128
1,878,637
16,217,394
95,080,763
12,635,064
2,311,596
6,660,779
4,816,994
1,069,372
15,068,848
3,223,306
GCC INDICES
Indices
Doha Securities Market
Saudi Tadawul
Kuwait Stocks Exchange
Bahrain Stock Exchage
Oman Stock Market
Abudhabi Stock Market
Dubai Financial Market
Lt Price
12,942.00
9,547.54
7,410.34
1,447.06
6,872.27
4,768.15
4,270.43
Change
-387.02
-355.46
-131.22
-14.30
-231.50
-111.77
-222.32
“Information contained herein is believed to be reliable and had been obtained from sources believed to be reliable. The
accuracy and completeness cannot be guaranteed. This publication is for providing information only and is not intended
as an offer or solicitation for a purchase or sale of any of the financial instruments mentioned. Gulf Times and Doha Bank
or any of their employees shall not be held accountable and will not accept any losses or liabilities for actions based on
this data.”
CURRENCIES
DOLLAR
QATAR RIYAL
SAUDI RIYAL
UAE DIRHAMS
BAHRAINI
DINAR
KUWAITI
DINAR
4
Gulf Times
Saturday, October 18, 2014
BUSINESS/LEISURE
Adam
German industry earns cash
from green energy upheaval
Reuters
Frankfurt
G
erman industry is learning
how to proﬁt from the upheaval and costs of the country’s shift towards solar and wind
energy.
Greater reliance on renewables
in Europe’s biggest power market
is making the peaks and troughs of
electricity production bigger and
less predictable, as the wind picks
up or drops and the sun shines or
disappears behind the clouds.
Power ﬁrms have therefore enlisted the help of big consumers such
as metals, paper and chemical companies to deal with the problem of
matching volatile supply to demand.
By upgrading their plants or
making relatively small changes to
their operations, growing numbers
of manufacturers are taking more
power at times of excess capacity
and less when supplies are tight.
In exchange for this ﬂexibility, the
manufacturers get breaks on their
power bills. Neither the suppliers
nor the consumers will reveal how
big the discounts are, with each deal
negotiated individually, but the need
for thrift is great.
Industry consumes half of all
power in Germany and pays roughly
twice the price of US rivals, mainly
due to higher labour and infrastructure overheads and a lack of shale
gas, which in the United States has
sharply cut generating costs.
“End consumers that were up to
now mostly passive can become active in the energy market and receive
money for their ﬂexibility,” said Thomas Schulz, co-founder of Entelios.
Entelios and Denmark’s Dong Energy A/S, are among the companies
vie for the business of helping manufacturers to earn rebates on their
power bills.
Germany’s move towards renewable energy accelerated in 2011 when
the government decided to phase out
Pooch Cafe
Garfield
Bound And Gagged
Royal Plaza Cinema Palace (1): Dolphin Tale (2D) 2pm; Open Window (2D)
4pm; Gone girl (2D) 6pm; The Judge (2D)
8.45pm; Left Behind (2D) 11.15pm.
Royal Plaza Cinema Palace (2): Enemies Closer (2D) 2.30pm; The Best Of
Me (2D) 4.15& 6.30pm; Left Behind (2D)
8.45pm; The Judge (2D) 11pm.
Royal Plaza Cinema Palace (3):
Rajadhi Raja (Malayalam) 2 & 10.45pm;
Enemies Closer (2D) 4.45pm; The Trials
Of Cate McCall (2D) 6.15pm; Gone Girl
(2D) 8pm.
Cinema Landmark (1): Dolphin Tale
(2D) 2pm; The Trials Of Cate McCall
Cryptic Clues
Sudoku
Sudoku is a puzzle
based on a 9x9 grid.
The grid is also
divided into nine
(3x3) boxes. You are
given a selection of
values and to complete the puzzle,
you must fill the
grid so that every
column, every row
and every 3x3 box
contains the digits
1 to 9 and none is
repeated.
Weekly’s Solutions
ACROSS
1. Dull student in the group
(5)
4. Does its burning cause
anger (7)
8. Anonymous and terribly
mundane (7)
9. Coin made from puree,
perhaps (5)
10. Crowd the compere (4)
11. Obvious list of cargo (8)
13. A hole in the floorcovering means it’s full of
water (4)
14. A long time needed for
some wage settlements (4)
16. Sweet throw in darts (5-3)
17. Poem one cheerleader put
on record (4)
20. Small picture of a
fashionable group (5)
21. Possibly retains a Greek
drink (7)
22. Say it’s fast (7)
23. Perpendicular cut, say (5)
Greater reliance on renewables in Europe’s biggest power market
is making the peaks and troughs of electricity production bigger
and less predictable, as the wind picks up or drops and the sun
shines or disappears behind the clouds
nuclear generation after the Fukushima disaster in Japan. Driven by
green-energy targets and incentives,
renewables now account for nearly
half Germany’s installed power capacity of over 185 gigawatts (GW).
But they contribute only a quarter
of the actual power supply because
wind and solar units operate only
between a ﬁfth and a third of the
time, while conventional nuclear
and fossil fuel plants can produce
electricity around the clock.
An expansion of the national
grid’s capacity will help to match
supply and demand, and overcome
the problem that most wind energy
is produced in the coastal areas of
northern Germany while much of
the power hungry industries are far
to the south.
But this will take time and be costly, so the utilities need manufacturers to turn their production up and
down more according to how much
energy is available from sources that
depend of the weather.
Utilities already use backstop
plants, typically natural-gas powered, which start generating when
other sources cannot meet demand.
But as the number of wind and solar
units grows, other power cushions
are needed.
So-called Demand Response (DR)
or Demand Side Management (DSM)
schemes, pioneered in the United
States, can ease the problem by ﬂattening demand when supply is low
while absorbing and distributing
oversupply at other times.
Among the companies involved in
such schemes is SGL, which is based
in the Bavarian town of Meitingen.
An expert in working with extreme temperatures, SGL makes
graphite electrodes that need to be
heated to 3,000 degrees Celsius
(5,400 Fahrenheit) to become electrically conductive. They then become components in scrap metal
recycling furnaces.
SGL has given its power supplier
LEW, part of the RWE utility group,
remote control over its industrial
ovens during 24-hour slots.
Behind (2D) 11.15pm.
Mall Cinema (2): Enemies Closer (2D)
2.30pm; The Best Of Me (2D) 4.15&
(2D) 3.45pm; Gone Girl (2D) 5.30pm; The 6.30pm; Left Behind (2D) 9.45pm; The
Judge (2D) 8.15 & 11pm.
Judge (2D) 11pm.
Cinema Landmark (2): Enemies Closer Mall Cinema (3): Rajadhi Raja (Malay(2D) 2.30pm; The Best OF Me (2D) 4.30 & alam) 2 & 10.45pm; Enemies Closer (2D)
6.45pm; Left Behind (2D) 8 & 11.15pm.
4.45pm; The Trials Of Cate McCall (2D)
6.15pm; Gone Girl (2D) 8pm.
Cinema Landmark (3): Rajadhi Raja
Global Cinemas, West End Park (1):
(Malayalam) 2 & 10.45pm; Enemies
Closer (2D) 4.45pm; Open Windows (2D) Villali Veeran (Malayalam) 2.30, 5.30, 8.30
& 11.30pm.
6.15pm; Gone Girl (2D) 8.15pm.
Global Cinemas, West End Park (2):
Mall Cinema (1): Dolphin Tale (2D)
2pm; Open Window (2D) 4pm; Gone girl Sapthama Sree Thaskara (Malayalam)
2.45, 5.45, 8.45 & 11.45pm.
(2D) 6pm; The Judge (2D) 8.45pm; Left
Quick Clues
DOWN
1. A girl in white and red? (8,5)
2. Relatives turn in insects (5)
3. Roof designed in the new
mode (4)
4. Asian taking an article from
a US state (6)
5. Charge made for sending a
coach (8)
6. Pliers for children (7)
7. Current means of
execution? (8,5)
12. Created a test case
concerning the tape (8)
13. Extracts work for a feeble
youth (7)
15. Island giving extremely
costly public relations to
America (6)
18. First to prepare for painting
(5)
19. He is from some hot island
(4)
ACROSS
1. Chaplain (5)
4. Congenial (7)
8. Withdraw (7)
9. Pollex (5)
10. Merit (4)
11. Turncoat (8)
13. Axe (4)
14. Stratagem (4)
16. Pottery (8)
17. Leaning (4)
20. Memorise (5)
21. Too old (4,3)
22. Waves (7)
23. Handle (5)
DOWN
1. Vertical (13)
2. Put off (5)
3. Dash (4)
4. Hymn (6)
5. Paternal (8)
6. Outspokenly (7)
7. Chagrin (13)
12. Begin (8)
13. Shorten (7)
15. Athwart (6)
18. Idol (5)
19. Abandoned (4)
Weekly’s Solutions
QUICK
Across: 3 Floodgate; 8 None; 9
Beginning; 10 Lieder; 11 Clean;
14 Eaves; 15 Lava; 16 Truss; 18
Chef; 20 Prick; 21 Winch; 24
Arcade; 25 Gallivant; 26 Rope; 27
Component.
Down: 1 Influence; 2 Interview; 4
Leer; 5 Oriel; 6 Genial; 7 Tank; 9
Beast; 11 Couch; 12 Navigator; 13
Hackneyed; 17 Spurt; 19 Fillip; 22
Coven; 23 Halo; 24 Anon.
CRYPTIC
Across: 3 Amidships; 8 Rose;
9 Transient; 10 Spirit; 11 Prate;
14 Whack; 15 Save; 16 Scrub; 18
Ruth; 20 Omega; 21 Sally; 24
Glider; 25 Windfalls; 26 Bore; 27
Threatens.
Down: 1 Brushwork; 2 Aspirants;
4 Mart; 5 Donor; 6 Hoists; 7 Pink;
9 Ticks; 11 Party; 12 Eavesdrop; 13
Remarried; 17 Bowls; 19 Handle;
22 Leapt; 23 High; 24 Glen.
6
Gulf Times
Saturday, October 18, 2014
BUSINESS
LME takes battle to Washington
after London warehouses win
Reuters
Washington
F
resh from a court win in Britain, the London Metal Exchange
now faces one of its biggest hurdles yet in its years-long crisis over its
warehousing policy that consumers
say has inﬂated prices: convincing US
lawmakers its reforms are enough.
When Britain’s Court of Appeal
handed a victory to the LME last week,
knocking out a challenge to the reforms
by Russian aluminum giant Rusal last
week, the LME’s head of business development, Matt Chamberlain, was in
Washington, a source familiar with the
matter said.
Chamberlain was there to plead the
exchange’s case with lawmakers who
have been pushing for even greater
change to the LME’s warehouse policy.
Senator Sherrod Brown was among
the people the LME visited, a spokeswoman for the Senator said. The Ohio
Democrat has been a ﬁerce critic of
the LME, urging US regulators to crack
down on the 137-year old exchange,
and threatening to write rules that
would compel regulators to intensify
oversight of the exchange on US turf.
Brewers like MillerCoors, which
uses aluminium for beer cans, have
complained that the LME hasn’t done
enough over the past four years to
tackle excessive stockpiling by warehouses owned by Wall Street banks.
They say this has distorted supplies
and driven up prices.
Now, sources say Brown is pushing
for the world’s oldest and biggest metals market and its warehousing network to take its most drastic step yet:
cap rent that warehouse operators can
charge on metal stored in their sheds,
discouraging stockpiling by putting
a limit on the money to be made from
storing.
The lawsuit had forced the LME to
halt its reforms, but last week’s Court
of Appeal decision means it can press
ahead with the plan announced last
year, telling warehouses they must ship
out at least as much metal as they are
taking in.
The so-called load-in/load-out
(LILO) rule is only one of many planned
changes to the rulebook of the LME,
which is owned by Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Ltd, to help cut
down waiting times to 50 days at most.
It also said it will study limiting
rents, but experts and the LME have
previously said such a far-reaching
measure could be deemed anti-competitive.
A source close to the LME said such
a measure could present legal difficulties abroad.
“I’d caution that without going into
whether a rent cap is legally defensible,
it would take the LME into uncharted
territory,” the source said. “For that
reason, among others, it would make
the LME vulnerable to challenge from
Traders work at the London Metal Exchange. The LME is now facing one of its biggest hurdles yet in its years-long crisis over
the warehousing policy.
those who may not ﬁnd a rent cap an
attractive proposition.”
Still, the IntercontinentalExchange
may have shown the way last year for
the LME, capping rents charged by
coffee and cocoa warehouses in an effort to stop hoarding.
Many metal market participants say
the LME may have reached the limit
of what it can do: it is caught between
producers such as Rusal who fear rule
changes could lower aluminum prices,
and industrial users who have long
complained that prices have been
propped up artiﬁcially.
Chamberlain’s trip to the US capital illustrates the pressure on the LME
as it tries to fend off criticism over
its handling of the years-long crisis.
“They (the LME) are saying ‘we’ve
done everything we can’. This (trip)
was to convince senators and regulators that they’ve done a good job,” said
the source familiar with the situation.
But US politicians, who have led the
effort for change, are still holding out
for even tougher oversight.
“It is not an argument (where) the
LME does not agree with US Congress,
but (about) what ... can practically be
delivered,” said the source close to the
LME. In Britain, the Financial Conduct
Authority, which regulates the LME,
has said it will keep a close watch on
commodities warehousing to ensure
reforms are carried out effectively, but
there has been no suggestion of legislative changes.
In the US, the Commodity Futures
Trading Commission holds sway over
its business, and the 2010 Dodd-Frank
law adopted after the ﬁnancial crisis
requires the agency to renew the LME’s
US license.
Conﬂicts between US regulators and
US units of global ﬁrms are not uncommon. And the CFTC is no stranger
to cross-border clashes - after years of
talks it is still at odds with European
regulators on how to apply a raft of new
rules on derivatives.
“The markets don’t know the same
borders, while regulation ... almost by
its very nature, is done locally,” said
Dan Waldman, a partner at law ﬁrm
Arnold & Porter, and a former general
counsel at the CFTC.
Congress is in the process of reauthorizing the CFTC’s mandate and
could in principle order the agency to
clamp down on the LME by law. Yet
while negotiations between the exchange and lawmakers continue behind closed doors, both sides may be
closer than they appear in public.
Gulf Times
Saturday, October 18, 2014
7
BUSINESS
Asian markets mixed;
global fears remain
AFP
Tokyo
M
ost Asian markets
were mixed yesterday
after Wall Street and
European shares stabilised in
response to upbeat US data, but
traders remained on edge about
the global economy and fresh
fears over Greece.
The ﬁgures from Washington calmed nerves slightly, and
helped push oil higher, while
the dollar and euro ticked up
against the yen in the afternoon.
Tokyo reversed a morning advance to end 1.40% lower, with
exporters hit by the stronger
yen. The Nikkei fell 205.87
points to 14,532.51, a ﬁvemonth low.
Seoul sank 0.95%, or 18.17
points, to 1,900.66 and Shanghai closed 0.65% lower, giving
up 15.32 points to 2,341.18.
However, Sydney rose 0.32%,
or 16.8 points, to 5,271.7 and
Hong Kong rose 0.53%, or
122.27 points to 23,023.21.
In other markets, Taipei
fell 1.40%, or 120.81 points,
to 8,512.88; Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co rose
1.65% to Tw$123.5 while smartphone maker HTC lost 2.27% to
Tw$129.0.
Wellington rose 0.29%, or
14.92 points, to 5,146.94; Trade
Me was up 1.39% at NZ$3.64
and Spark added 0.17% at
NZ$2.885.
Manila ended down 0.36%,
or 25.36 points, at 7,033.22;
Philippine Long Distance Telephone was up 0.7% at 3,182
pesos while Aboitiz Power fell
3.58% to 39 pesos. Globe Telecom slid 3.49% to 1,602 pesos.
Shares around the world have
A pedestrian watches a share prices board displayed on a window of a securities firm in Tokyo. The
Nikkei closed down 205.87 points to 14,532.51 yesterday.
been hammered in recent weeks
by worries about the global
economy as the eurozone, China and Japan struggle to reignite
growth.
Those fears increased this
week when the US, which has
been the only economy showing
signs of strength, came in well
below expectations.
However, there was some relief Thursday when the Department of Labor said initial job-
less claims for the week ending
October 11 fell to their lowest
level since 2000.
Also, the Federal Reserve said
industrial production rebounded in September from an unexpected drop in August.
The news helped Wall Street
reverse morning losses, although the three main indexes
still provided an anaemic lead.
The Dow dipped 0.15%, while
the S&P 500 and Nasdaq were
marginally higher. It also helped
the dollar and euro pick up
against the yen, which is considered a safe bet in times of
turmoil, before they retreated
towards the end of the day.
In late trade, the dollar
bought ¥106.55, compared with
¥106.33 in New York Thursday.
The euro bought $1.2791 and
¥136.30 against $1.2809 and
¥136.19.
The dollar has fallen in value
against the yen and the euro
since the Fed earlier this month
indicated it will likely refrain
from hiking interest rates soon
owing to worries about overseas
economies.
“Any delay in expected monetary normalisation by the Fed
will indeed hurt the dollar,” said
Omer Esiner, chief market analyst at Commonwealth Foreign
Exchange.
“However, the dollar is likely
to remain underpinned by the
view that America’s economy
remains the ‘cleanest shirt in
the hamper’.”
The euro held up despite renewed concerns about Greece
after the government hinted
that it might exit a four-yearold bailout early as it looks to
free itself of strict controls attached to the deal.
Analysts have said investors
fear Athens will not be able to
stand on its own two feet if it
goes ahead with the plan, with
the country’s main stock market plunging and borrowing
costs rising.
The issue has stirred memories of the dark days of the eurozone debt crisis that sent global
markets spiralling downwards
and fanned talk of a break-up of
the economic bloc.
World oil prices edged up.
US benchmark West Texas
Intermediate (WTI) for November delivery was up 25
cents at $82.95 – the contract
has rallied after briefly falling
below $80 a barrel Thursday
for the first time since June
2012. Brent crude for December delivery climbed 11 cents
to $85.93.
Gold was at $1,239.35 an
ounce against $1,241.90 late
Thursday.
Sensex rises ahead
of state poll results;
rupee rebounds
Reuters
Mumbai
I
ndian shares rose yesterday,
led by stocks of domestic oriented companies including
lenders such as HDFC Bank on
value buying and hopes a likely
win for the BJP in two recent
state elections would help push
key reforms.
Opinion polls showed Prime
Minister
Narendra
Modi’s
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was
likely to win in Haryana and Maharashtra, unseating unpopular incumbents. Traders say the
wins should help push key reforms such as gas price hike and
goods and services tax.
The gains, however, were not
enough to avert a fourth consecutive weekly fall amid one of
the most volatile spells in world
markets in years.
A possible recession in Europe, a ﬂoundering economy in
Japan, a slowdown in China and
the Ebola virus outbreak have
conspired to rattle investors,
triggering a level of volatility in
global markets.
Shares are expected to remain
volatile in the upcoming holiday-truncated week, amid the
state election outcome due tomorrow, ongoing July-September corporate results and global
events such as China’s quarterly
GDP on Tuesday.
“It’s tough to call markets
amid global volatility and fall
in oil prices. Fundamentally the
growth in India looks better than
peers and it remains a buy on
declines,” said Deven Choksey,
managing director of K R Choksey Securities.
The benchmark BSE index
rose 0.42%, or 109.19 points,
to end at 26,108.53, but closed
0.72% down for the week.
The broader NSE index rose
0.41%, or 31.50 points, to end
at 7,779.70. It, however, ended
1.02% lower for the week.
Domestic-oriented
stocks,
especially lenders, led the gainers. HDFC Bank and ICICI Bank
gained 3.1% each.
State Bank of India ended up
2.3% and Axis Bank rose 2%.
Among midcap banks, Oriental Bank of Commerce rose 5.4%
and Andhra Bank surged 5.7%.
Among non-banking lenders,
Housing Development Finance
Corp gained 1.6% while IDFC
advanced 2.1%.
Meanwhile the rupee gained
yesterday as a rise in local shares
along with positive US unemployment and industrial output
data helped sentiment, but traders remain cautious given the
uncertainties about global economic growth.
On the week, however, the rupee fell, declining in ﬁve of the
last six weeks. Markets will be
shut next Thursday and Friday
due to national holidays.
All eyes are now on Chinese
growth data due next week.
Global markets could be in for
another bout of selling if China’s third quarter GDP numbers
are dismal and the government
promises no stimulus, say traders.
Most Asian currencies ended
the day ﬁrmer as solid US economic data eased concerns over
global growth.
The number of Americans ﬁling new claims for jobless beneﬁts fell to a 14-year low last
week and industrial output rose
sharply in September, positive
signals that helped ease fears
over the economic outlook.
The head of the St Louis Federal Reserve Bank, James Bullard, also said the US central bank
may want to keep up its bondbuying stimulus for now due to
a drop in inﬂation expectations.
CORPORATE RESULTS
Morgan Stanley reports 87% jump in third-quarter profit
earlier. The Rhode Island-based company’s net income rose to
$159mn, or 57 cents per share, from $99mn, or 35 cents per share,
a year earlier.
Schlumberger
The world leader in servicing oil industry installations, Schlumberger, surprised the markets with a record performance in the
third quarter despite sanctions against oil giant Russia.
And despite a big fall in the price of oil recently, the French-US
group said it was confident about the strength of its business and
markets although it did not risk making a forecast for performance for the rest of the year.
In the three months to September, the company made a net profit
of $1.9bn (€1.48bn), an increase of 13.6% from the equivalent
figure last year.
The underlying figure for earnings per share, the figure closely
watched on Wall Street, was 3.0 cents higher than the market
expected at $1.49.
Operating profit rose by 12.0% to $2.8bn, from sales which rose by
13.6% to $12.6bn. Despite the sanctions, the group said that activity had increased in all geographical areas where it does business
and across all sectors of the industry.
Schlumberger chief executive Paal Kibsgaard said: “Strong activity in North America and robust growth in international areas, led
by Latin America and supported by Europe/Africa/CIS (group of
former Soviet-dominated countries) in spite of international sanctions in Russia, drove third-quarter results to a new record high.”
Google
Morgan Stanley reported an 87% rise in third-quarter earnings
as the Wall Street bank’s trading, investment banking and wealth
management businesses benefited from increased client activity
and a hot equity market.
Morgan Stanley’s shares rose 3.5% to $33.67 in early trading yesterday as both profit and revenue handily beat analysts’ average
forecast.
The results show that even though Morgan Stanley has been
focusing on its wealth management business since the financial
crisis, its traditional investment banking operation can still have a
big impact on its earnings.
Morgan Stanley topped the list of IPO underwriters globally in the
first nine months of the year, beating main rivals Goldman Sachs
Group and JPMorgan Chase & Co.
Equity underwriting revenue almost doubled to $464mn, helped
by a booming market for initial public offerings. Morgan Stanley
was among the banks that worked on Alibaba Group Holding’s
$25bn IPO - the biggest in history.
Bond trading revenue, excluding accounting adjustments,
jumped 19.4% to $997mn after a sudden increase in market volatility last month that also boosted its Wall Street rivals.
Overall institutional securities revenue, which includes trading
and investment banking, rose 22% to $4.52bn.
Wealth management revenue rose 9% to $3.79bn, but accounted
for 42.5% of Morgan Stanley’s total revenue, compared with
50.7% for the bank’s trading and investment banking business.
The business achieved a pretax profit margin of 22%, above Chief
Executive James Gorman’s minimum target of 20% and the 21%
reported for the second quarter.
Honeywell
Honeywell International, a maker of aircraft cockpit parts and
other electronic equipment, reported a better-than-expected
third-quarter profit, helped partly by higher margins in its aerospace business.
The company’s shares rose 3% in premarket trading after it also
raised the low end of its full-year forecast range for profit and
revenue.
Margins in its aerospace business, its largest, rose to 20.3% in the
third quarter ended September 30 from 18.8% a year earlier.
Honeywell has been able to perform well this year despite a sluggish global economy, mainly due to its focus on controlling costs.
In July, the company merged its transportation division with its
aerospace business to take advantage of the similarities in the
units. “Looking ahead to 2015, we’re once again planning for a
slow growth macro environment, but expect to continue delivering strong earnings growth,” Chief Executive Dave Cote said in a
statement yesterday.
Honeywell said it now expected 2014 sales of $40.3bn-$40.4bn,
compared with its previous forecast of $40.2bn-$40.4bn.
The company forecast earnings of at least $5.50 per share for the
year, up from its previous projection of at least $5.45. It maintained the top end of the forecast range at $5.55 per share.
Total revenue increased 4.8% to $10.11bn.
Net income attributable to Honeywell rose to $1.17bn, or $1.47 per
share, from $990mn, or $1.24 per share, a year earlier.
Textron
Textron reported a 60.6% jump in quarterly profit, driven by
higher deliveries in its aviation unit, which includes Cessna and
Beechcraft jets.
The company also raised its full-year forecast for earnings from
continuing operations to $2.05-$2.15 per share from $1.92-$2.12.
The aviation market has been witnessing improved growth, with
demand for business jets rising since 2012.
Textron bought smaller business jet maker Beechcraft in March.
The company said revenue at Textron Aviation was up by $487mn
in the third quarter, reflecting the impact of the Beechcraft acquisition and higher jet deliveries.
The aviation business contributed $1.08bn to the company’s total
revenue of $3.4bn in the quarter ended Sept. 27.
The unit delivered 33 jets in the quarter, up from 25 jets a year
The rise of smartphone use to access the Internet, and slowing
clicks on ads, cut into profits by Google in the third quarter, the
company has revealed.
Shares in Google fell after the technology giant said that although
overall revenues had risen sharply, underlying performance suffered from a buying spree to recruit top talent.
Google said Thursday its profit in the past quarter dipped slightly
from the level a year earlier.
Net third-quarter profit fell five% to $2.8bn, while revenue grew
20% to $16.5bn. Shares in Google tumbled 2.3% to $512.20 in
after-hours trading on the results, which disappointed Wall Street.
Paul Ausick at the finance blog 24/7 Wall Street said Google’s
revenue fell short of expectations, and that revenue from “paid
clicks” from online ads was also disappointing.
A key indicator for the market, the number of clicks on ads on
its sites rose by 17.0% on a 12-month comparison, but this was
sharply down from growth of 28.0% in the second quarter.
Each click generates a payment by the company which has
placed the ad.
The market also pays close attention to another indicator, the
average price of each click. This fell by 2.0% after a fall of 9.0% in
the previous quarter.
General Electric
General Electric Co reported a slightly higher-than-expected
quarterly profit yesterday, as cost cuts that helped boost margins
across its industrial businesses offset revenue that fell below analysts’ targets. Shares of GE rose 4% to $25.21 in premarket trading.
The US conglomerate posted a 4% rise in organic revenue, which
excludes acquisitions, for its industrial manufacturing businesses,
on which Chief Executive Officer Jeff Immelt is increasingly focusing the company.
Although that quarterly growth did not meet some analysts’
expectations, GE said such revenue was on track to hit the higher
end of its projected range of 4% to 7% growth for 2014.
Reaching that high end “would be quite a pickup,” said Tim
Ghriskey, chief investment officer with Solaris Asset Management,
which owns GE shares.
“They were able to engineer the earnings in industrials,” Ghriskey
said. “It’s just that the revenues were relatively weak.
“The stock is reflecting more forward-looking statements than
third-quarter results.”
Like those of other diverse US manufacturers, GE’s shares had
been underperforming the broader market this year amid concerns about a soft global economy, after a big run-up in 2013.
“The environment is volatile, but infrastructure growth opportunities exist, and GE is executing well,” Immelt said in a statement.
Immelt is seeking to boost GE’s earnings contribution from its
industrials businesses, which include jet engines and oil and gas
equipment, to 75% by 2016 from 55% last year, while reducing its
exposure to the GE Capital finance unit.
Saturday, October 18, 2014
BUSINESS
GULF TIMES
QSE WEEKLY REVIEW
Key index sheds over 6% on foreign institutions’ selling
By Santhosh V Perumal
Business Reporter
Reflecting the nervousness in the
global markets, Qatar Stock Exchange
witnessed more than 93% of the listed
stocks in the red and capitalisation
erode about QR44bn during the week.
Foreign institutions net sold about
QR400mn worth securities to drag the
benchmark index more than 6% during
the week, which saw QNB report 13%
rise in net profit in the first nine months
of this year.
Real estate, industrials and consumer
goods were primarily instrumental in
the downward rally during the week
that saw global credit rating agency
Standard and Poor’s view that the new
Basel III capital norms is not expected
to have major impact on the Gulf
countries’ Islamic banking sphere.
However, local retail and institutions as
well as non-Qatari individual investors
were seen net buyers during the week
that saw credit rating agency Moody’s
say that QNB’s international operations
in some Middle East and North Africa
(Mena) countries expose it to downside
risks.
Realty stocks plummeted more than
9%, industrials (7%), consumer goods
(6.55%), telecom (5.9%), banks and
financial services (4.88%), transport
(4.6%) and insurance (3.18%) during the
week that saw a QSE official say that
the bourse is set to have more liquidity
providers. The index that tracks
Shariah-principled stocks was seen
melting faster than the other indices
during the week that saw trade volume
largely skewed towards realty and
banks, which together accounted for
about 67% of the total trade volume.
The 20-stock Total Return Index
plunged 6.43%, All Share Index
(comprising wider constituents) by
6.12% and Al Rayan Islamic Index by
6.95% during the week, which saw
Ezdan and Masraf Al Rayan dominate
the trading ring in terms of both
volume and value.
Of the 43 stocks, only three advanced;
while 40 declined during the week
that saw Qatar’s inflation rise 2.8% in
September on higher rentals and with
costlier garments and food.
Eleven of the 12 banks and financial
services; eight each of the eight
consumer goods and the nine
industrials; four each of the five insurers
and four real estate; all of the three
transport and all of the two telecom
stocks settle lower during the week.
Major losers included QNB, Industries
Qatar, Ooredoo, Salam International
Investment, Mazaya Qatar, Qatari
Investors Group, Ezdan and Gulf
International Services; even as Qatar
General and Reinsurance, Islamic
Holding Group and Mannai Corporation
bucked the trend during the week.
Market capitalisation eroded 5.86% to
QR699.39bn during the week. Micro,
small, mid and large cap equities were
seen losing 6.08%, 5.88%, 5.57% and
5.46% respectively.
Micro, small, mid and large cap equities
are, however, up 39.91%, 29.47%, 22.82%
and 20.11% respectively year-to-date.
Foreign institutions’ net selling rose
to QR394.01mn against QR364.57mn
the previous week. However, local
retail investors’ net buying zoomed to
QR178.2mn compared to QR53.49mn
the week ended October 9.
Domestic institutions’ net buying rose
to QR198.56mn against QR191.2mn the
previous week.
Non-Qatari individual investors’ net
buying sunk to QR16.97mn compared
to QR119.88mn the week ended
October 9. A total of 53.61mn shares
valued at QR2.83bn changed hands
across 29,066 transactions.
The real estate sector saw a total of
20.37mn equities worth QR466.41mn
trade across 5,386 deals.
As many as 15.51mn banks and
financial services stocks valued at
QR1.24bn changed hands across 9,316
transactions.
A total of 3.48mn consumer goods
stocks valued at QR193.1mn trade
across 2,089 deals.
The telecom sector saw 5.12mn equities
worth QR139.38mn change hands
across 1,850 transactions.
The industrials and transport segments
recorded 6.9mn and 1.4mn shares
worth QR670.78mn and QR54.9mn
trade across 8,761 and 960 deals
respectively.
A total of 0.83mn insurance equities
valued at QR59.72mn changed hands
across 704 transactions.
In the debt market, there was no trading
of treasury bills and government bonds
during the week.
US consumer
sentiment at
highest since
July 2007
Reforms could
add 3.7% to
French growth
over 10 years,
predicts OECD
Reuters
New York
AFP
Paris
U
S consumer sentiment
rose in October to the
highest in more than
seven years, boosted by views
on personal ﬁnances and the
national economy, a survey released yesterday showed.
The Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan preliminary
October reading on the overall
index on consumer sentiment
came in at 86.4, the highest
since July 2007. The gains were
unexpected, as a Reuters survey showed a forecast for a slip
to 84.1 from last month’s 84.6
reading.
“The data show absolutely
no signs that fear and panic is
about to overtake the consumer
sector,” survey director Richard
Curtin said in a statement, referring to “broader concerns about
the global economic meltdown,
escalating military conﬂicts, and
rising concerns about Ebola.”
The survey’s gauge of consumer expectations also rose to
hit 78.4, the highest since October 2012, from 75.4 and beating a
forecast for 74.4.
The survey’s barometer of
current economic conditions
was unchanged at 98.9 and also
beat its forecast of 98.0.
The survey’s one-year inﬂation expectation fell to 2.8%
from 3.0%, while the survey’s
ﬁve-to-10-year inﬂation outlook held steady at 2.8%.
The dollar edged higher
against a basket of major currencies after the strong data.
“Obviously, some of the momentum in the economy is continuing, despite what Wall Street
tells you,” said Axel Merk, chief
investment officer at Palo Alto,
California-based Merk Investments. “The recent market volatility is deﬁnitely not reﬂected,
and the glass is half-full again.”
The data eased traders’ concerns after worries surrounding
the health of the global economy
shook stocks, bonds and currencies markets this week. The dollar had gained against the euro,
yen, and Swiss franc earlier in
the session on greater stability in
markets.
T
Rosneft logo is seen at its headquarters in central Moscow. Rosneft, the world’s top listed oil company by output, and Gazprom Neft, Russia’s fourth largest producer by
output, said yesterday there was no need to panic.
Russia’s top oil ﬁrms
play down price fall
Reuters
Moscow
O
il companies in Russia, the
world’s biggest producer which
has budgeted for $100 crude,
played down the oil price drop, saying
it would not last and would not damage
long term projects.
Rosneft, the world’s top listed oil
company by output, and Gazprom Neft,
Russia’s fourth largest producer by output, said yesterday there was no need to
panic.
“The fall in global oil prices is not
critical for the company... There are no
reasons for concern... The company’s
projects remain economically viable at
prices much lower than current levels,”
Rosneft said in e-mailed comments.
Rosneft’s capital expenditure stood at
around 700bn roubles ($17bn) for this
year under an oil price of below $100 per
barrel, according to its senior official.
World benchmark Brent crude has
lost more than 20% of its value since
June, dropping sharply under $100, and
this week hit its lowest for four years,
hitting the value of the rouble. Yesterday it was trading around $87.
Accounting for around 40% of Russia’s total oil output, Rosneft is under
Western sanctions for Moscow’s role
in the Ukraine crisis that have limited
its access to western funding and technologies.
Gazprom Neft, the oil wing of state
gas company Gazprom , also hit by
sanctions, said that its current investment projects envisage an oil price of
$95 per barrel while any drop is compensated for by movements in the value
of the rouble.
“For those whose currency is not
pegged to the US dollar, recent price
drops have been partly offset by swings
in foreign exchange rates: thus Russia’s nominal export revenues in roubles
inched up lately even as they plunged in
dollar terms,” the International Energy
Agency said in a report this week.
Gazprom Neft said in e-mailed comments to Reuters that weaker prices
would not last. “The price will return to
the level of $95-110 per barrel,” it said,
but did not give a time frame.
Russia, with daily average oil output
at around 10.5mn barrels, plans to spend
around $150bn a year over the next 10
years to bring onstream new ﬁelds and
raise output at mature ones, according
to Energy Minister Alexander Novak.
“The current oil price fall is, in a large
part, of a speculative nature. It is hard
to tell when this speculative factor will
ﬁzzle out,” Novak was quoted as saying
by Russian news agencies on Thursday.
Russia’s Energy Ministry did not yet
reply to Reuters request seeking comment. Before the Western sanctions,
Russia was betting on foreign companies to help it with hard-to-reach deposits, including those in the Arctic,
deep water or shale oil.
ExxonMobil had to wind down cooperation with Rosneft in Arctic while
Royal Dutch Shell had suspended development of shale oil in Russia’s Bazhenov
formation with Gazprom Neft.
Russia’s 2015-2017 budget is based on
an average oil price of $100 per barrel.
President Vladimir Putin said this week
he cannot rule out revisions to the recently adopted budget to limit spending
in light of falling oil prices.
With Western sanctions already
prompting Russia to tap its rainy-day
fund to support its companies and
banks, a long-term fall in oil price could
hit economic prospects, already at the
brink of recession, further.
According to some economists, including Sergei Aleksashenko, a former
deputy central bank governor, a $10
drop in oil prices would strip 700bn
roubles, or 5%, from Russian budget
revenues per year.
That translates to about 1% of GDP.
Local economists estimate that a $10
price drop could rob Russia of 3 to 4% in
GDP growth.
The International Monetary Fund
halved its forecast for Russia’s 2015
gross domestic product growth to 0.5%
this month, saying that international
tensions had created downside risks to
its estimates.
he moribund French
economy could get a
sharp boost each year over
a decade if highly controversial
reforms to help businesses are
enacted, predictions from the
OECD showed yesterday.
Such changes could add 0.4%
to economic output every year
over the next 10 years, it said,
with the total beneﬁt amounting
to 3.7% of gross domestic product (GDP).
In the next ﬁve years, as the
measures take effect, the beneﬁt
could equate to 0.3% of output
each year, the Organisation for
Economic Co-operation and
Development said.
The calculations by the Parisbased body, a policy forum for 34
advanced democracies including
France, point to a signiﬁcant extra beneﬁt since France’s economy is set to grow by only 0.4%
this year.
“To put the French on the
path to stronger growth, but
also more inclusive, requires
the reinforcement of structural
reforms started in 2012,” OECD
Secretary General Angel Gurria said in a statement with the
report, which was to be given to
President Francois Hollande.
France’s economic growth has
sunk into the doldrums this year,
held back by near record unemployment and the government’s
huge pile of debt, which has put
it on a collision course with the
European Union.
The reforms are strongly opposed on the left of the governing Socialist party. Hollande
is counting on the measures to
turn the economy around.
Finance Minister Michel Sapin forecast at the beginning of
the month that France’s output
would grow by only 0.4% this
year, recovering to 1.0% in 2015,
1.7% in 2016 and 1.9% in 2017.
Paris also predicts its budget
deﬁcit—the shortfall between
revenue and spending—will hit
4.3% of GDP next year and only
fall to the EU’s debt ceiling of
3.0% in 2017, instead of next year
as previously promised.
Volatile markets deepen anxiety over European bank tests
Reuters
London
V
iolent swings on ﬁnancial markets in the past week have deepened investors’ anxiety about
what Europe’s review of the health of
its banks will reveal later this month.
The European Central Bank’s Asset
Quality Review (AQR) of 130 leading
banks and stress tests of their ability to
withstand a future crisis are supposed
to shore up conﬁdence by drawing a
line under the eurozone crisis.
But the possibility that even a handful of the banks will be told to raise billions of euros in extra capital has put
investors on alert, especially as this
week’s volatility on equity, debt and
energy markets may point to more pain
for European Union lenders by hitting
their proﬁts.
Information on the review, results of
which are due on October 26, is scant
and there is no market consensus on its
outcome.
Concerns range from losses on bond
portfolios held by banks in peripheral
eurozone economies such as Italy or
Greece to the greater difficulty of raising funds when markets are turbulent.
“Regardless of the AQR ... the market will still be focused on banks’
health because many of the weaker
banks also have signiﬁcant holdings of
sovereign bonds, so when there is market volatility, these banks are hit,” said
Alberto Gallo, head of European macro
credit research at RBS.
“(And) while before it was very easy
to raise capital even for weaker banks
... this may be harder going forward.”
Investors expect most banks to pass
the health-check, vindicating lenders’
recent efforts to rebuild their balance
sheets. European banks have raised
$56.9bn from equity capital markets
this year, up 32% from at the same stage
last year, according to Thomson Reuters
data. There have been 41 equity raisings, compared with 27 a year ago.
But the market turmoil has magniﬁed fears about “outliers” which may
The headquarters of the European Central Bank in Frankfurt. The ECB’s Asset
Quality Review of 130 leading banks and stress tests of their ability to withstand
a future crisis are supposed to shore up confidence by drawing a line under the
eurozone crisis.
just scrape through the test, or fail.
These centre on Italy’s third-biggest bank Monte dei Paschi di Siena.
Its share price fell to a record low on
Thursday, even though it raised €5bn
from shareholders in June.
Monte dei Paschi’s chief executive has
said the bank’s capital raising efforts put
it on a stable footing, but a big shareholder said last month it was uncertain
whether the ECB health checks would
result in further capital requirements.
Monte dei Paschi features most
prominently in eight separate reports
on which banks are most at risk by
analysts at the likes of Citi, Goldman
Sachs, JP Morgan and Credit Suisse.
Views on Spain’s Banco Popular,
France’s Credit Agricole and Greece’s
Piraeus Bank are more mixed. Each is
rated as most at risk in one of the reports, although other reports judge
them as being less at risk.
Even the eurozone’s biggest economy is not exempt. Some reports have
cited Germany’s Commerzbank as being among those most at risk, while the
bonds of state-owned lenders HSH Nordbank, Munich Hypo and Nord/LB have
taken a hit over fears they may fall short.
Most banks cited as outliers declined to
comment publicly, though several privately criticised the research analysts for
trying to predict the outcomes. “From
the outside it’s hard to know (how a bank
will do),” said one banker. The reasons
cited for potential capital weakness are
varied, ranging from the burden of bad
loans in weak eurozone economies to
the threat of losses on securities held
by banks.
Given the wide range of views and
broader market jitters over the outlook for European economic growth,
some investors say making predictions
on the outcome is impossible as much
depends on how strict the ECB will be.
The ECB has set a capital ratio of 8%
of risk-weighted assets as a benchmark in a baseline scenario and 5.5%
in an adverse stress scenario, although
success or failure would also depend
on whether the regulator ﬁnds loans
on the book to be overvalued, which
would eat into capital.
Some optimistic investors are betting that there is scope for a positive
surprise from the results, given efforts
already this year on ﬁlling capital gaps.
Some banks, such as Italy’s BP Milano,
said they were reassured after preliminary meetings with the regulator.
BASEBALL | Page 7
GOLF | Page 8
Ishikawa
powers Giants
past Cards into
World Series
Birthday boy
Els takes
charge in
Hong Kong
Saturday, October 18, 2014
Dhul-Hijja 24, 1435 AH
ATHLETICS
Gatlin dumped
from top athlete
shortlist
GULF TIMES
SPORT
FOCUS
Page 5
CRICKET
Qatar reach U-20
World Cup after
two decades
Confusion
over Windies
pullout from
India tour
Beat China 4-2 to make it to AFC U-19 Championships semi-final
AFP
Dharamsala
Agencies
Nay Pyi Taw, Myanmar
ndian cricket chiefs insisted yesterday the West Indies had called
off their tour as a result of a pay
dispute with their players after a
day of extraordinary back-and-forth
statements between the two sets of ofﬁcials.
As India won the fourth of what were
supposed to be ﬁve-one-day internationals by 59 runs in Dharamsala, the
Board of Control for Cricket in India
said that, despite West Indian denials,
the tour was over.
“The BCCI would like to clarify that
despite all its efforts, the Micromax
Cup India vs West Indies ODI series
has been curtailed because of the ongoing issue between WICB (West Indies Cricket Board) and its players, and
the withdrawal of the WI team from the
ongoing tour of India.”
The BCCI then issued its own timeline of events which it said had led to
the cancellation of the tour.
At the post-match presentation ceremony, West Indies one-day captain
Dwayne Bravo appeared to indicate
the tour was over as far as he was concerned.
“It’s been tough for us on tour,” Bravo
said. “I give credit to my team, sadly it
(the tour) has come to an end now.
Everyone is sticking together, despite
what’s going on.
“We look forward to representing the
West Indies again some time soon.”
However, during the course of Friday’s match, the WICB insisted no
decision had been taken to call off the
tour.
Nevertheless, the WICB added a further statement would be made at the
end of yesterday’s match.
“The West Indies Cricket Board advises, that, contrary to media reports,
it has taken no decision to discontinue
the ongoing tour to India,” the statement said.
“The WICB will make a further
statement following the conclusion
of the Fourth One Day International
which is in progress.”
Earlier, the BCCI said it had been
informed by West Indies team manager Richie Richardson that the squad
I
Q
atar secured a trip to the
AFC U-19 Championship
semi-ﬁnals for the ﬁrst time
in 24 years, after the West
Asians defeated China 4-2 in an action-packed quarter-ﬁnal which saw
three players being sent off at a saturated Wunna Theikdi Stadium yesterday.
Qatar also booked a place in the 2015
FIFA U-20 World Cup for the ﬁrst time
since they hosted the tournament in
1995.
Ahmed al-Sadi headed home his
ﬁfth goal of the tournament in the
ﬁfth minute. At the stroke of halftime, ﬁrst-half substitute Akram Aﬁf
was brought down in the area by Zhou
Yuchen, earning the goalkeeper a red
card and the forward a penalty which
he converted.
Rain greeted the second half and
with it came a goal from Gui Hong that
gave China a glimmer of hope in the
53rd minute.
Qatar captain Ahmad Moein then
struck from long range to put the score
at 3-1 before Wei Jingzong’s penalty
conversion that saw defender Assim
Madibo dismissed.
However, there was still time for
one more goal as Almoez Ali ended any
China deﬁance in stoppage time.
Wei Shihao was also sent off shortly
before the ﬁnal whistle.
Felix Sanchez Bas’ side will next
travel to Yangon for Monday’s semiﬁnal meeting with hosts Myanmar.
“The goal was to reach the World
Cup playing good, attacking-based
possession football,” said the Spaniard. “I think we have less pressure
going into the semis. We can try and
play our game with no pressure and
expectations.”
Qatar’s Spanish coach couldn’t have
asked for a better start to the quarterﬁnal, though, as Abdullah al-Ahrak’s
right-wing cross just ﬁve minutes
into the tie was headed in by al-Sadi,
steaming in at the back post, for his
ﬁfth goal in four games.
Tang Shi went close to giving an
immediate reply as he burst into the
penalty area from the left-ﬂank and
forced goalkeeper Yousof Hassan into
a hasty block at his near post.
Forward Ali could have doubled
the Qatar lead with three minutes of
the half remaining after leaving Gao
Zhunyi for dead and surging into the
penalty area, but rather than try to
score himself, he unselﬁshly squared
the pass for al-Sadi who was dispossessed by a backtracking defender.
But Qatar only needed three more
minutes before they added a second,
and on the stroke of half-time, substitute Aﬁf, who had barely been on
the pitch for a few minutes, sprinted
through the centre and was fell by
Zhou inside the penalty area, earning
the custodian his marching orders and
Aﬁf a penalty, which he scored with a
composed ﬁnish.
Although the West Asians began
the second period with a one-man
advantage, it was China that came out
stronger as heavy rain fell.
Just eight minutes in, they had
halved the deﬁcit through Gui, who
tore down the left side of the penalty
area before cutting back onto his right,
Qatar players celebrate a goal during their 4-2 win over China in the AFC U-19 Championship quarterfinal yesterday; (below)
Qatar players in action during the match and coach Felix Sanchez Bas.
sending two defenders sliding past,
and ﬁring past Hassan.
Renewed hope for the East Asians
lasted just ﬁve minutes, though,
as Moein’s effort from 25 yards out
skimmed off the sodden turf and past
replacement goalkeeper Jia Xinyao
into the far corner to restore Qatar’s
two-goal cushion.
But with just ﬁve minutes of the
action-packed tie remaining, China
were back on level in numbers on the
pitch as Madibo received a red card for
his foul on Lyu Pin inside the box and
Wei Jingzong converted the penalty to
make the score 3-2.
Any hopes of a tense ﬁnish to
the tie were ended by Ali, however,
as he powered into the box at the
other end and despite seeing his
efforts saved twice by Jia, China’s failure to get the ball clear proved their
undoing as on his third attempt Ali
riﬂed home.
Frustration overcame Boavista
starlet Wei Shihao at the end as he
received his second yellow card to
leave China with nine men as the final whistle blew and the Qatari celebrations began.
would complete Friday’s match but not
play any more games—a ﬁfth one-dayer, a Twenty20 match and three Tests
remained on the itinerary.
“The BCCI is shocked and extremely
disappointed at the decision taken by
the WICB,” BCCI secretary Sanjay Patel said in a statement.
“The WICB’s inability to resolve
internal issues with its players and allowing the same to affect an ongoing
bilateral series does not reﬂect well on
any of those involved.
“The withdrawal gives little thought
to the future of the game, the players
and the long standing relations between the BCCI and WICB.”
Bravo had said before the start of
the tour on October 8 that the players
had not accepted a payment agreement signed on their behalf by the
West Indies Players Association with
the WICB.
However, the players took the ﬁeld
for the ﬁrst two one-dayers in Kochi
and New Delhi, while the third match
in Visakhapatnam was cancelled due to
a severe cyclonic storm that hit India’s
east coast.
SRI LANKA READY TO STAND IN
The BCCI, meanwhile, announced it
had ﬁnalised a ﬁve-match one-day
series against Sri Lanka between November 1 and 15 to replace the cancelled
West Indies tour.
“The BCCI wishes to thank Sri Lanka
Cricket (SLC) for its swift response and
for extending its support to ensure that
the international cricket season is not
curtailed,” a separate statement from
the BCCI said.
The exact schedule and venues for
the hastily-arranged series will be announced shortly, Patel said.
Former West Indies fast bowler
Michael Holding, working as a TV
commentator in India, said abandoning the tour was “ridiculous”.
Speaking before the WICB’s latest statement, Holding told Sky TV: “I
have never seen anything like this happen in the past and I do not understand
why the West Indies Cricket Board
have taken this stance.
“They are not trying to sort the
problem out, they have just decided to
take their bat and ball and go home and that is ridiculous.”
In a show of unity, West Indies captain Dwayne Bravo was joined by his team for
the toss ahead of the fourth ODI against India in Dharamsala yesterday. (BCCI)
2
Gulf Times
Saturday, October 18, 2014
FOOTBALL
SPOTLIGHT / QATAR STARS LEAGUE
ACROSS BORDERS
Gritty Sadd come
from a goal down
to beat Ahli 2-1
Goals in the second-half from Hassan al-Haydos and Hamza Sanhaji help Sadd
comeback to beat Ahli who had taken the lead through Alain Dioko in the first half
By Joe Koraith
Doha
T
he Qatar Stars League resumed
after a two-week break and it
did so with a bang as Al Sadd
produced a gritty come-frombehind 2-1 win against Al Ahli in a keenly
contested match that saw seven yellow
cards being handed out.
Sadd, who were coming off a conﬁdence boosting 3-0 win over defending champions Lekhwiya in the previous
round, started the game on the front foot
and should have taken the lead as early as
the 13th minute when they were awarded
a penalty after Abdelkarem Hassan was
needlessly brought down by Tahir Zakariya inside the box. Khalfan Ibrahim
stepped up to take the penalty but his
shot was blocked was the Ahli keeper
Amer Dosari and so conﬁdent were the
Sadd players about Ibrahim scoring that
nobody was prepared for the rebound
which was then comfortably cleared by
the Ahli defence.
The shock of not scoring through a
penalty seemed to rest heavily on the
shoulders of Sadd players as Ahli enjoyed
a strong period of domination which saw
them carve out a couple of chances with
Alain Dioko being involved in all three
with the closest chance coming in the
24th minute when a great cross from Meshal Abdullah from the left ﬂank missed
the Ahli’s striker’s outstretched leg by the
smallest of margins.
Sadd responded with a few attacks of
their own but nothing that Ahli keeper
Dosari had too much trouble dealing with
and ended up a conceding the opening
goal due to an error.
In the 42nd minute Ahli’s Abdullah
intercepted a casually taken freekick and
set off of a run down the middle and send
in a great pass for Dioko inside the box
who clinically put it past the Sadd keeper
and into the far corner for his ﬁfth goal of
the season.
Just two minutes later Ahli could have
doubled their score when Dioko set off on
a solo run down the middle and though
Sadd defender Jung Soo Lee was able
to block him, the ball fell favourably for
Ahli’s Mojtaba Jabari who only had the
Sadd goalkeeper Saad Abdullah to beat
but couldn’t take the shot in time.
The ﬁrst half ended with Sadd’s unbeaten record looking under threat but
they scored the equalizer just three minutes into the second half through Hassan
al-Haydos who latched onto a pass by Ibrahim and scored past Dosari into the far
corner – a replica of the Dioko goal.
Ahli could have restored the lead in the
52nd minute when an unmarked Dioko got
a pass inside the box from a corner but his
header was just wide.
Then started a period of the match
when one got to see end to end play but
no goals. Ahli had two corners and two
freekicks to score from but couldn’t
while Sadd’s Soo Lee came within inches
of giving his side the lead when his ﬂying
header from inside the box deﬂected off
an Ahli defender and went wide.
Sadd then ﬁnally managed to break
the deadlock in the 79th minute through
substitute Hamza Sanhaji who, having
got a pass inside the box from Hassan,
ﬁred in a great shot inside the near post
to give his team the lead.
Ahli had a great chance to score an
equaliser in the 91st minute but substitute Jouhen Beitsoun’s header from insde
the box was just wide of the far post.
Sadd now have six wins from seven
matches so far and are looking in good
form at the top of the table.
Saudi’s Al Ahli kicks
off partnership with
Qatar Airways today
By Sports Reporter
Doha
Q
atar Airways, the national carrier for the
State of Qatar, will
kick off its sponsorship with Saudi Arabia’s Al Ahli
Football Club today at the club’s
round 7 match in the Abdullatif Jameel Saudi Professional
League.
Following the formal announcement of the partnership
on October 12, the match marks
the debut of Qatar Airways’
branding on the Al Ahli Football
Club jerseys.
Prince Fahd bin Khaled bin
Abdullah, the Chairman of AlAhli Football Club said: “Like
Qatar Airways, Al Ahli Club
holds many values close to its
heart striving for excellence, and
constantly aiming for even greater success. Al Ahli has a prominent position in Saudi Arabia’s
world of sport and has developed
a distinctive identity based on
integrity and resilience. We are
looking forward to seeing this
partnership develop and build on
the success of both entities.”
“We are delighted to see Qatar
Airways logo on the shirts team
Al-Ahli Football Club during
their ﬁrst game in the league after signing the partnership,” said
His Excellency Akbar al-Baker,
Group Chief Executive of Qatar Airways. “This achievement
represents Qatar Airways’ faith
in the importance of the role of
sports in building communities.
Football, in particular, brings
people together and this value is
something that runs through the
core of our business.”
Qatar Airways currently operates 86 ﬂights per week to seven
destinations across the Kingdom
of Saudi Arabia, namely; Dammam, Riyadh, Jeddah, Madinah,
Gassmin, Ta’if and Al Hofuf.
Al Maha Airways is set to begin
operating in the Saudi Arabian
market in the New Year and will
initially use a ﬂeet of A320-200
aircraft for operations between
Jeddah and Riyadh, before expansion to further domestic
routes across the Kingdom.
Qatar Airways has seen rapid
growth in just 17 years of operations, to the point where today
it is ﬂying a modern ﬂeet of 137
aircraft to 144 key business and
leisure destinations across Europe, the Middle East, Africa,
Asia Paciﬁc, North America and
South America.
The multi-award winning airline was awarded three accolades
at Skytrax Awards 2014: World’s
Best Business Class, Best Middle East Airline, and Best Business Class Lounge. They have also
been named Airline of the Year by
Skytrax, Air Transport News, and
Business Aviation, and won Best
Business Class and Best Airline for
International Travel at the recent
Business Travel Awards.
Gharafa draw 1-1 with Khor, Salal
beat Shahaniya 3-0
Ahli striker Alain Dioko’s
goal went in vain
Al Sadd’s Hamza Sanhaji (front) celebrates after scoring his team’s second goal
against Al Ahli at the Al Arabi Stadium yesterday. PICTURES: Othman Iraqi
Al Gharafa’s Moayad Hassan Fedaily (left) and Al Khor’s Mohammed Juma Alalawi tussle for the ball during their match
yesterday. PICTURE: Shemeer Rasheed
Gharafa and Shahaniya played out a 1-1 draw. In the other late
match yesterday, Umm Salal thrashed Al Shahaniya 3-0, with
Abdulqadir Ilyas netting a hat-trick.
Ilyas, who recently joined Umm Salal from El Jaish on loan,
struck in the 35th, 55th and 78th minutes to help his team score
only their first win in six matches.
Today, Lekwiya clash with Al Kharatiat, El Jaish meet Qatar
Sports Club and Al Shamal play Al Sailiya.
BOTTOMLINE
Paulinho brace helps Arabi bounce back in style
tried to go around Al Arabi goalkeeper
Hamza and in the process lost control
of the ball.
Al Arabi found the equalizer in the
50th minute through Ezekiel who was
left unchallenged inside the penalty
area and found the mark after Al Wakrah goalkeeper Idrees showed poor
technique and could only manage to
deﬂect the ball into the goal.
Al-Baraka then put Al Arabi ahead in
the 77th minute for the ﬁrst time, the
Al Wakrah backline once again leaving
ample space in the penalty area for the
Qatar player to exploit.
Five minutes later Paulinho put the
issue behind doubt, beneﬁtting from
a Mohamed Rajeb pass and shooting
past Idrees who was found wanting yet
again and could only palm the ball into
the goal.
By Sports Reporter
Doha
A
series of defensive howlers by
Al Wakrah enabled Al Arabi to
bounce back from two goals
down and clinch a convincing
4-2 victory in the Qatar Stars League
last night.
Al Arabi appeared headed for a big
defeat after Mohsin Moutaouali had put
Al Wakrah ahead 2-0 by the time the
match was 20 minutes old, but Maher
Kanzari’s side squandered their chance
to post what would have been only their
third win in seven matches as their
defence failed to get their act together
when it mattered.
Paulinho was twice on target for Al
Arabi, while Imoh Ezekiel and Mousa
al-Baraka also registered their names
on the score sheet as the former Qatar
giants struck thrice in the second half
for their third victory in six matches.
With Al Sadd and Lekhwiya once
again involved in a battle for top honours, it would take an enormous effort
from mid-table teams like Al Arabi and
Al Wakrah to make a dent in the standings, but on the evidence presented
yesterday possibility of that happening
appears dim and distant.
Al Arabi fell a goal behind as early as
in the eighth minute when Ahmed Ali
Khil did most of the spadework on the
Al Arabi striker Paulinho (right) scored two goals in his team’s 4-2 win over Al Wakrah yesterday. Pictures: Jayaram
right ﬂank and crossed to the unmarked
Moutaouali who scored with an easy
ﬁnish past goalkeeper Rajab Hamza.
Moutaouali was once again in the
thick of things in the 20th minute, this
time his powerful shot from 25 yards
taking a deﬂection off the post and
trickling in, much to Hamza’s dismay.
With both teams adopting an attacking style and in the process neglecting
their defence, it was only a matter of
time before Al Arabi scored.
And sure enough they reduced the
margin in the 22nd minute when the
unmarked Paulihno nicely controlled a
long pass from the centre and drilled it
past the Al Wakrah goalkeeper Hassan
Idrees from close range.
Al Wakrah missed a golden chance to
consolidate their position immediately
after resumption but Adel Mohamed
Al Arabi coach Dan Petrescu (left) hugs
Al Wakrah coach Maher Kanzari.
Gulf Times
Saturday, October 18, 2014
3
FOOTBALL
BUNDESLIGA
OPINION
UNHAPPY
SPOTLIGHT
UNSPORTSMANLIKE BEHAVIOUR
Ribery may return to
Bayern squad today
Train strike hits football
fans in Germany
German Vogts leaves
Azerbaijan coaching post
Evans released from jail
after rape sentence
Striker pulled up for pulling
own shirt in penalty claim
Bayern Munich winger Franck Ribery may
return to the squad for today’s Bundesliga
game with Werder Bremen, coach Pep Guardiola said yesterday.
Ribery has been out of action for around a
month with a knee injury but has “completed
two good training sessions” and has “no pain,”
according to Guardiola. However, the decision
on whether to include Ribery will be made only
after today’s final training session. “When he is
fit, perhaps he is in the squad,” Guardiola said.
League leaders Bayern have a nearly fully
fit squad for the visit of bottom club Werder
Bremen but one player missing is Spanish
midfielder Thiago Alcantara.
Football fans in Germany may have to find
alternative transport to Bundesliga matches this
weekend after the GDL union for train drivers
called a strike yesterday. From 2 am local time
today morning train drivers are to walk away
from passenger trains and are not scheduled to
return until the early hours of Monday.
The Deutsche Bahn rail company said it had
cancelled all football special trains.
“The arrival and departure of fans to and from
the stadiums cannot be guaranteed by Deutsche Bahn,” it said in a statement.
Some clubs have advised fans to travel by bus
while others, such as Borussia Dortmund, have
created forums to encourage car-sharing.
German Berti Vogts has resigned as Azerbaijan
coach, the country’s football federation reported
on its official website yesterday.
The statement said that Vogts had informed
Azerbaijan football federation chief Rovnag
Abdullayev about his decision during a meeting
in Zurich, Switzerland on Thursday.
The 67-year-old, who led Germany to the
European Championship title in 1996, explained
that his reason for quitting was because his
team had failed to “show persistence during the
last game”. Vogts added that the problem of
his players’ physical fitness, something he had
repeatedly emphasised in recent years, had not
been resolved.
Former Sheffield United and Wales striker Ched
Evans was released from prison on Friday after
serving half of a five-year sentence for rape.
The 25-year-old, who has also played for Manchester City and is a Wales international, was
convicted in 2012 of raping a 19-year-old woman
in a hotel room.
Evans, who left Wymott Prison near Leyland in
north-west England at about 0400 GMT, has
promised to make a “very personal and profound” statement on his website next week.
The website also said that on July 15, Evans’s
new legal team had submitted an application to
the Criminal Cases Review Commission which is
the first step to a second appeal.
Former Brazil international Leandro Damiao has
been charged with “unsportsmanlike behaviour” after he pulled his own shirt in a bid to fool
the referee into awarding a penalty.
The Santos striker tugged his own shirt at a
corner kick during last Sunday’s 3-0 defeat by
Criciuma in an attempt to make it look like he
was being held back. The referee missed the
incident but video evidence was used to bring
charges.
“Referees are heavily criticised for their supposed mistakes,” the Superior Court of Sporting
Justice said in a statement. “However the
athletes are the first ones not to help them, as
in this case.”
India signs
up with FIFA’s
anti-corruption
watchdog
NEW DELHI: India’s football chiefs have inked a deal
with FIFA to ensure the Indian Super League and other
domestic competitions are
corruption free, the world
governing body said.
Early Warning System
(EWS), a FIFA subsidiary,
and the All India Football
Federation (AIFF) signed a
monitoring service agreement aimed at “safeguarding
the integrity of the game” in
a “global ﬁght against match
manipulation”, a FIFA statement posted late Thursday
conﬁrmed.
The EWS will monitor betting markets on irregularities
and analyse speciﬁc match
situation in its sporting
context. If EWS’s analysis
indicates strong grounds for
suspecting match ﬁxing, the
AIFF will be alerted.
The year-long agreement
covers the ISL and the
I-League tournament that
features India’s top clubs.
FIFA’s director of security
Ralf Mutschke hailed the
deal as an “important step”
in the organisation’s battle against corruption in
football.
Welcoming the deal, an AIFF
official told AFP that ISL
player have been banned
from using mobile phones in
the dressing rooms, or meeting anyone—including family members—there before
or after matches without
prior permission. The official
added the players are being
strictly monitored.
“The (anti-corruption)
measures will be implemented in letter and spirit,” the
official, who did not want to
be named, said.
The glitzy 10-week long ISL,
which opened on October 12,
features former superstars
like Italian great Alessandro Del Piero of Italy and
Nicolas Anelka teaming up
with Indian players in eight
franchised clubs.
The league is backed by
sports management giants
IMG and Indianbnaire
Mukesh Ambani, and televised by Rupert Murdoch’s
Star TV.
The AIFF last month appointed a retired federal
investigator Javed Siraj as its
integrity officer, even though
no known case of illegal
bookmakers targeting Indian
football has been unearthed
so far.
But cricket’s Indian Premier
League, which inspired the
creation of the ISL, has been
embroiled in a spot-ﬁxing
scandal since last year following the arrest of three
cricketers and a team official.
A Supreme Court-appointed
panel, which is probing allegations of corruption in the
IPL, is due to submit its ﬁnal
report next month.
SPANISH LEAGUE
Messi eyes record on
anniversary as Barca
seek Clasico boost
‘If we don’t win this one we will suffer when we play in Madrid’
AFP
Barcelona
I
n the week that he marked
the 10th anniversary of his
competitive debut for Barcelona, Lionel Messi could
become the all-time top scorer
in the history of La Liga.
The Argentine made his bow
as a 17-year-old in a 1-0 win at
city rivals Espanyol on October
16, 2004. Now he is preparing
to face Eibar at the Camp Nou
today needing just two goals to
equal Telmo Zarra’s all-time
Spanish top-ﬂight record of 251,
set in the 1950s.
Messi, who told fans he was
“constantly trying to improve
and win more titles,” has been
back at his best in the early
weeks of this season to help the
Catalans to the top of La Liga
with six wins and a draw in their
opening seven games.
They are two points clear of
Valencia and have yet to concede a goal so far, and they will
want to keep that form going
against Eibar before they go to
Real Madrid for the ﬁrst Clasico
of the campaign next weekend.
“To go into the Clasico in the
best possible condition we need
to win on Saturday,” said leftback Jordi Alba.
“If we don’t win this one we
will suffer when we play in Madrid. Eibar have had good results away from home and if we
don’t play at a high level they
will make it difficult for us.”
Eibar will hope that Luis Enrique’s side are distracted by
thoughts of Madrid and their
Champions League meeting
with Ajax in midweek, although
the Basque side have had an
impressive start to the season
themselves.
The entire population of the
town could ﬁt into the Camp
Nou three times and still leave
empty spaces, but Gaizka Garitano’s side, in their debut topﬂight season, currently have as
many points as their far more
illustrious neighbours Athletic
Bilbao and Real Sociedad combined.
“This is football and it’s clear
FC Barcelona Argentinean striker, Lionel Messi (right) and Uruguayan Luis Suarez (left), among others, during a team’s training session at Joan Gamper Sports City in Barcelona,
yesterday. FC Barcelona will face Eibar in a Spanish Primera Division match today.
that if we defend well, don’t
make mistakes and get a bit of
luck, we can come away with
at least a point,” said optimistic
midﬁelder Dani Nieto, formerly
of Barcelona B.
Madrid in ﬁne form Real Madrid are fourth, four
points behind Barcelona, but
the capital club are looking to
extend their own ﬁne run of
form when they visit struggling
Levante.
Carlo Ancelotti’s side have
won six games in a row in all
competitions since losing at
home to Atletico Madrid last
month, and they have scored 27
goals in that time.
They have a huge week ahead
of them, with a trip to Liverpool in the Champions League
on Wednesday before they face
Barca, but Ancelotti has conﬁdence in his improving team.
“Since the defeat to Atletico
things have gone well,” remarked the Italian. “We have
had balance to the team and
scored a lot of goals. We have
conceded more, especially from
dead balls, but that is something
we are tidying up little by little.”
Iker Casillas is expected to
remain the club’s ﬁrst-choice
goalkeeper for now, meaning Keylor Navas will be on the
bench against the club he left in
the summer.
Meanwhile,
champions
Atletico host Espanyol on Sunday looking to bounce back
from their 3-1 defeat at Valencia
before they face Malmo in the
Champions League.
Valencia are ﬂying high in
second after an unbeaten start,
although new Spanish inter-
national striker Rodrigo has
played down their prospects of
competing for the title ahead of
their trip to Deportivo.
“Football is passion, but people need to be aware of what our
aim is and be clear that we are
not going to compete for the title this year,” he said, targeting
Champions League qualiﬁcation instead.
Sevilla in third go to Elche
while Athletic Bilbao are looking to end a run of seven games
without a win when they host
Celta Vigo.
FIXTURES
(all times GMT)
Today’s matches
Levante v Real Madrid (1400),
Athletic Bilbao v Celta Vigo (1600),
Barcelona v Eibar (1800), Cordoba
v Malaga (2000)
Tomorrow’s matches
Atletico Madrid v Espanyol (1000),
Deportivo v Valencia (1500), Elche
v Sevilla (1700), Villarreal v Almeria
(1900)
Monday’s match
Real Sociedad v Getafe (1845)
SPOTLIGHT
Jose Mourinho denies lack of Villa ‘respect’
AFP
London
C
helsea manager Jose
Mourinho hit back
yesterday at claims he
showed a lack of respect
to Aston Villa boss Paul Lambert
and his assistant Roy Keane.
Lambert and Keane were both
critical of Mourinho’s attempt
to shake hands before the end of
Chelsea’s 3-0 victory over Villa
at Stamford Bridge on September 27.
Former Manchester United
captain Keane labelled Mourin-
ho’s actions “disgraceful” while
Lambert backed up his deputy by
saying: “My thoughts are exactly
the same as Roy’s on them. The
game has not even ﬁnished. I just
thought it was wrong. It’s not
the way I was brought up.”
But Mourinho—who has shaken hands with opposition managers before the ﬁnal whistle on a
number of occasions before—denied he was guilty of showing a
lack of respect to the opposition.
Addressing a media brieﬁng
at his club’s Cobham training
ground, south of London, ahead
of the Premier League leaders’
trip to capital rivals Crystal Pal-
ace, Mourinho said: “First of all,
I appreciate the comments.
“I think they are both two
great examples of polite and
very well educated people, and
because I’m a humble guy who
tries to learn every day and with
every experience, I appreciate
the comments,” he added with a
hint of sarcasm.
Asked if he would do the same
thing again, Mourinho replied:
“Yes.”
The week following the Villa
clash, Portuguese boss Mourinho was involved in a touchline confrontation with Arsenal
manager Arsene Wenger.
Jose Mourinho
The Frenchman has subsequently apologised for pushing
his opposite number but Mourinho insisted he had nothing
more to add about the incident.
“I gave you my reaction after
the match, saying nothing had
happened. The reaction from
everyone else was saying nothing had happened,” Mourinho
said Friday.
Mourinho revealed a number
of players are doubtful for the
trip to Selhurst Park including
Diego Costa who required treatment following international
duty with Spain.
The forward returned early
from a previous Spain stint in
early September after injuring
a hamstring in a friendly with
France.
Since then, Mourinho has
maintained Costa must be
nursed through his recovery and
was not yet ready to play two
games a week.
But Costa played the whole of
Spain’s defeat by Slovakia last
Thursday before being used for
all but eight minutes of the victory over Luxemburg four days
later.
“The Spanish team played in
Luxembourg on Sunday. I gave
them Diego, (Cesc) Fabregas
and (Cesar) Azpilicueta,” Mourinho said. “I gave the players two
days off, Monday and Tuesday,
so they had to report to train on
Wednesday at 3pm (1400GMT).
“And Diego was here Monday
at 9am. So you can imagine how
strong he was to be here at 9am
on Monday.”
The Chelsea manager conﬁrmed he had not had contact
with the Spain set-up ahead of
the international break to discuss Costa’s ﬁtness levels.
He added: “I’m powerless. Because I know that, I don’t waste
my time contacting national
teams.”
4
Gulf Times
Saturday, October 18, 2014
FOOTBALL
SPOTLIGHT
Rodgers defends Sterling, denies England rift
AFP
London
L
iverpool
manager
Brendan Rodgers came
to the defence of Raheem Sterling yesterday
but said there was no breach
between himself and England
manager Roy Hodgson.
The 19-year-old forward
found himself under ﬁre after
Hodgson revealed the teenager
had told him he was tired ahead
of England’s Euro 2016 qualiﬁer
in Estonia.
Sterling was on the bench for
that match, but came on to win
the free-kick from which Wayne
Rooney scored England’s only
goal in a 1-0 victory.
ITALIAN LEAGUE
Juve go to
Sassuolo
as Roma
remain
defiant
AFP
Rome
C
hampions
Juventus
travel to struggling Sassuolo today looking to
maintain their lead at
the top of Serie A, while nearest
challengers Roma insist the ﬁght
for the title has just begun.
Juventus moved three points
clear at the summit two weeks
ago after a bad-tempered 3-2
win over Roma in Turin which
saw the Bianconeri concede
their first goals of the campaign.
Despite their defeat, Roma
goalkeeper Morgan De Sanctis insists the top-of-the-table
clash showed Massimiliano Allegri’s men the capital club are a
force to be reckoned with as they
prepare to host Chievo on Saturday.
“We don’t want to ﬁnish second, we want to win (the league).
We can do it, we realised that
after seeing their reaction,” De
Sanctis said in an interview with
Gazzetta dello Sport on Thursday.
Almost a fortnight after an explosive encounter that saw ﬁve
goals, three penalties and two red
cards as well as the sending-off
of Roma coach Rudi Garcia, the
dust has yet to settle.
De Sanctis on Thursday repeated allegations, notably by
Giallorossi captain Francesco
Totti, that Juventus benefit
from favourable refereeing decisions.
“You have to know how to
lose, but it is hard to accept certain decisions when you have the
feeling you’re not playing on an
equal footing,” said the ‘keeper,
who played for Juve at the start of
his career.
While the champions have
steadfastly rejected the accusations, Juve defender Angelo Ogbonna went on the charm offensive when he told Sky Sport: “We
don’t underestimate any of our
opponents.
“Roma are a top side, they’ve
done well in the transfer market
with a view to the Champions
League.”
Both Roma and Juve are expected to rest key players whenever possible this weekend
ahead of midweek Champions
League clashes against Bayern
Munich and Olympiakos respectively.
Inter host Napoli in the pick
of Sunday’s ﬁxtures when home
coach Walter Mazzarri will be
ﬁrmly in the spotlight.
Mazzarri steered Napoli to a
runners-up spot in 2013 but has
struggled to work his magic with
the Nerazzurri, who recently
dropped to 10th place following
consecutive defeats to Cagliari
(4-1) and Fiorentina (3-0).
Fixtures: (all kick-offs 1300
GMT unless stated)
Today’s matches: Roma v
Chievo (1600), Sassuolo v Juventus (1845)
Tomorrow’s matches: Fiorentina v Lazio (1030), Atalanta
v Parma, Cagliari v Sampdoria, Verona v Milan, Palermo v
Cesena, Torino v Udinese, Inter
v Napoli (1845), Genoa v Empoli
(1845)
Hodgson’s comments led to
accusations that Sterling had
been reluctant to play for England.
However, Rodgers said yesterday: “I’ve obviously read and
listened to a lot of what has been
said.
“He (Sterling) has been absolutely incredible for me and what
has been nice to see is his maturity as a young man; he’s 19, a full
international and he will hopefully be a key player for England
and Liverpool for many years,”
added Rogers, who congratulated Hodgson’s side on their two
recent qualifying wins over San
Marino and Estonia.
“This is a kid we bring up to be
responsible and honest—lots of
players will tell you they haven’t
played when they haven’t felt
right but this is a kid who didn’t
say that,” explained Rodgers.
“What he was saying was he
felt tired. I’ve had it a number of
times here with Raheem where
he has been tired in his legs but
he has gone on to play in games
and be exceptional,” the Northern Irishman said.
“You have to respect Roy’s decision that he decided not to play
him and play Adam Lallana.
“What has been disappointing in the whole affair is it has
been grossly unfair how the kid
has been put on the back pages
for something he clearly did not
say.”
Hodgson also queried the
worth of Liverpool’s use of a 48hour recovery programme for
Liverpool manager Brendan Rodgers
the likes of ‘fast’ players such as
Sterling and Daniel Sturridge,
who has not played since sustaining a thigh injury in an England training session last month.
“Roy is a manager with great
experience who has been around
the game long enough and all
managers deal with situations
different. I am not here to make
any comment on that,” Rodgers
added.
“One thing to clear up is this
second-day recovery: people are
looking at it thinking Liverpool
players are sat at home with their
feet up on the couch.
“The recovery is different for
each individual player but our
second day of recovery is a technical session outside and the key
in that session is the intensity
and density of the session—the
spaces are very small which still
allows me to do the technical and
tactical work required.
“That has worked for me right
the way through my life and in
my time here I believe helped
Steven Gerrard and Daniel Agger, when he was here, to play
the games they did.
“We ask our players to be responsible when they go on international duty to only think
of their country and not their
clubs, so this is a club which is
very much club and country, not
club versus country.
“We (Rodgers and Hodgson)
have exchanged messages but
because of the busy schedules
we have not been able to speak.
That is ﬁne.”
ENGLISH PREMIER LEAGUE
Chelsea seek Palace coup
‘Teams are out to get us because we are at the top and playing well’
Premier League this season but
they will each look to put that
right at home to West Ham and
Leicester respectively on Saturday.
Yet it is Queens Park Rangers, who welcome Liverpool to
Loftus Road on Sunday, who are
bottom of the table.
There has been growing
speculation that QPR’s owner, Malaysian businessman
Tony Fernandes, could sack
veteran manager Harry Redknapp.
But QPR centre-half Rio Ferdinand, who made his name at
West Ham under Redknapp,
urged Fernandes to remain patient.
“We are not even in double
ﬁgures for the amount of games
played yet,” former Manchester
United and England star Ferdinand said.
“To push the panic button
now would be crazy in my eyes.
Harry still comes across to me
as a ﬁghter and a man with a lot
of ﬁght left in him.”
After a shaky start, Manchester United under van Gaal are
now fourth and amongst the
Champions League places.
They will look to hold on to
that position when they travel
to West Bromwich Albion on
Monday.
AFP
London
C
helsea head to London
rivals Crystal Palace
today eager to maintain
or even extend their
ﬁve-point lead at the top of the
Premier League table as domestic action resumes after the international break.
Palace surprised Chelsea, and
the rest of the league, by winning last season’s corresponding clash and Blues captain John
Terry has dismissed talk that
this season’s title-race is already done and dusted.
“Clearly it (the title race) is
not over,” he said.
“Other teams have been in
this position. It’s nice to have
the lead but when you’re at the
top everyone wants to shoot you
down.
“That’s the good thing about
the Premier League and why
everyone loves it. Teams are out
to get us because we are at the
top and playing well.”
Defending champions Manchester City, currently second,
are at home to Tottenham Hotspur and on-loan midﬁelder
Frank Lampard has told his
team-mates to be wary of a revitalised Spurs.
“They may go through a
slight transitional period but I
was very impressed with their
manager (Mauricio Pochettino)
when he was at Southampton
and if he can bring the same imprint on Tottenham, who arguably have more quality within
their squad, they’ll do really
well. They are a good side.”
Yet one of the success stories
of the season so far has been the
way in which south coast side
Southampton, despite losing
their manager and several key
players to top-ﬂight rivals, have
nevertheless ﬂourished under
FIXTURES
Chelsea have the best team since Arsenal’s ‘Invincibles’ and could go whole season unbeaten.
new manager Ronald Koeman
to be third in the table ahead of
their match at home to Sunderland on Saturday.
Such has been the impact the
former Dutch international has
made at St Mary’s there have
been calls for him to take charge
of the Netherlands national
side, who have lost two of their
opening three Euro 2016 quali-
ﬁers after ﬁnishing third at this
year’s World Cup in Brazil.
KOEMAN VOWS TO STICK
WITH SAINTS
But as far as Koeman is concerned, his country missed their
chance to install him as manager
when they opted for Guus Hiddink following Louis van Gaal’s
post-World Cup departure to
Manchester United.
“I hope to stay here for my
whole contract, but it’s football,” said Koeman, who signed a
three-year deal with the Saints.
“There’s certainly no chance
to move now out of Southampton.
“I was interested in that job,
because when I left Feyenoord
I was nominated to be the na-
SCOTTISH LEAGUE
BOTTOM LINE
Celtic need to be braver,
says Scott Brown
AFP
Glasgow
C
eltic captain Scott
Brown has called on
his Celtic teammates
to be braver as they
bid to bounce back from their
disappointing start to the season.
The Hoops lost to newlypromoted Hamilton Academical in their previous match before the international break to
leave the Scottish champions
in sixth place in the table.
Next up for the Scottish
champions is a trip north to
face bottom side Ross County
on Saturday and midﬁelder
Brown says the Celtic players
must work harder to produce
better results.
“We’ve got faith that we can
go up to Dingwall on Saturday
tional coach but the federation
chose Hiddink.”
Arsenal face Hull in a repeat
of last season’s thrilling FA Cup
ﬁnal where the Gunners came
from 2-0 down to win 3-2 and
so claim their ﬁrst major trophy
in nine years.
Both
newly-promoted
Burnley and struggling Newcastle have yet to win in the
(1400GMT unless stated)
Today’s matches: Arsenal v Hull,
Burnley v West Ham, Crystal Palace
v Chelsea, Everton v Aston Villa,
Manchester City v Tottenham
(1145GMT), Newcastle v Leicester,
Southampton v Sunderland
Tomorrow’s matches: Queens Park
Rangers v Liverpool (1230GMT),
Stokes v Swansea (1500GMT)
Monday’s match: West Bromwich
Albion v Manchester United
(1900GMT)
and win,” the Celtic skipper
said.
“We’ve got to start well,
we’ve got to take our chances
and we’ve got to believe that
we can do it.
“There are a lot of good
players in the dressing room
and we do believe that we’re
a good team, and we’ve got
to back ourselves and believe.
“We’ve got to be braver on
the ball, we’ve got to work
harder as a group and we’ve
got to know when to close
down or when to sit off as well.
We can’t go running about
here and there for 90 minutes
because it’s hard.
“We’ve got to press teams
better but we’ve been working
on that on the training ground
and we’ve just got to look forward now and be as positive as
possible.”
The defeat to Hamilton was
their ﬁrst to the Lanarkshire
club since 1938 and ended
a two-year unbeaten run at
home in the league.
Brown was scathing of his
teammates after the defeat,
accusing them of “hiding”.
And after returning from
two weeks away on international duty with Scotland the
midﬁelder is adamant he was
right to hit out at his fellow
players.
“I have deﬁnitely calmed
down but I still believe what I
said was right,” the Celtic captain said.
“I am not going to change
my thoughts on getting beat
and being angry.
“I said everyone was hiding,
not just some.
“You have to be disappointed and have it in the back of the
head that you could have done
something better and as a team
we should have done something better.
“Sometimes the truth has
got to come out and it is not
always the best thing.”
With two defeats and two
draws from their opening eight
ﬁxtures, this has been the
worst start to a season Celtic
have suffered since 1998.
Celtic’s poor form has
heaped pressure on manager Ronny Deila, who only
replaced Neil Lennon in the
summer, but he has backed his
players to bounce back against
Ross County on Saturday.
Fixtures (1400 GMT unless
otherwise stated)
Today’s matches: Ross
County v Celtic (1145 GMT),
Dundee United v Partick Thistle, Motherwell v Dundee, St
Johnstone v Kilmarnock, St
Mirren v Inverness CT
Blatter is not serving
football anymore,
says Platini
Reuters
Paris
U
EFA president Michel
Platini hit out at FIFA
chief Sepp Blatter
yesterday, saying the
Swiss has stopped serving the
cause of football.
“Sepp is not the president
of FIFA anymore. He is FIFA,”
Frenchman Platini, whose book
“Let’s Talk About Football” was
released this week, told sports
daily L’Equipe.
“Platini, Pele, Blatter, (former
FIFA presidet Joao) Havelange
must yield to the interests of
football.
“One must not use football,
but serve football.”
Platini, 59, has no regrets
for not running against Blatter who is likely to secure a
fifth term at next year’s elections.
UEFA president Michel Platini
“It was not the time. I do not
regret anything. One day maybe.
We will see,” he said.
The former France great,
who led Les Bleus to their
Euro 1984 title, was reelected as UEFA president in
2011.
Gulf Times
Saturday, October 18, 2014
5
SPORT
ATHLETICS
TENNIS
Gatlin dumped from
top athlete shortlist
Murray stays
in control to
reach semis
Qatar’s Barshim, Kenyan Kimetto and Frenchman Lavillenie to compete for the IAAF award
AFP
Vienna
Reuters
London
ndy Murray reached
the Austrian Open
semi-ﬁnals yesterday,
playing it safe against
an unknown opponent, keeping
German Jan-Lennard Struff on a
tight leash for a 6-2, 7-5 win.
Murray’s debut at the indoor
event continued on song, with
the second seed staying alive in
the race for one of the remaining
spots in the ATP year-end ﬁnal.
Top seed David Ferrer was lining
up for his quarter-ﬁnal, facing a
big test from sixth seed Ivo Karkovic. Murray’s only wobble against
the 52nd-ranked Struff came as
the Scot trailed 3-1 in the second
set, but Murray quickly put that
right and returned to 3-all.
The former Wimbledon champion ran out the winner after
less than 90 minutes with a love
game. “I expected a tough match
from him, even if I didn’t know a
lot about his game,” said Murray,
provisional tenth in the race to
London which will be decided this
weekend and over the remaining
two weeks of the ATP season.
“He was hitting big. I had to
play well to win and ﬁght to get
through. My game was more consistent than in the previous round,
I was able to change up the rhythm
He was playing high-risk tennis
but he made a couple of mistakes
which helped me. I still was not
able to hit a lot of winners.”
Murray will face Viktor
Troicki, who took a big step in
his return from tennis exile as he
beat Thomaz Bellucci 7-6 (7/4),
6-7 (2/7), 6-2 to reach his ﬁrst
semi-ﬁnal since 2011.
The number 127 has crawled
back up the rankings after returning in July from a one-year ban
for delaying a post-match blood
test in 2013. Troicki, 28, made his
return with just 20 ranking points
remaining thanks to a wild card
from Gstaad organisers.
He reached the quarter-ﬁnals
in Switzerland and did the same
last month in Shenzhen, China.
A Beijing wild card produced
a ﬁrst-round win, with Troicki
capitalising on success from
qualifying to carve his way
through the Vienna event upon
his debut. The Serb last played a
semi-ﬁnal at Moscow, 2011.
“It’s great to win,” said the
player who was stoutly defended
during his ban by world number
one and good friend Novak
Djokovic. I’ve not played a semiﬁnal in a long time. My comeback
has been tough but I always knew
it would be like this: you have to
come from the bottom if you want
to arrive at the top.”
JUSTIN GATLIN
C
ontroversial
United
States sprinter Justin
Gatlin is out of contention to win the IAAF’s
athlete of the year award after
failing to make the ﬁnal threeman shortlist, the sport’s governing body announced yesterday.
As widely expected, doubledoper Gatlin was among those
cut from the ﬁnal shortlist after
a two-week-long poll conducted
by the “world athletics family”.
The 32-year-old was included
on the original 10-man shortlist
thanks to a stellar year of sprinting in which he posted six of the
fastest 100m times.
Gatlin, who served a oneyear ban for testing positive for
a banned stimulant in 2001 and
then failed a second test in 2006,
which led to a four-year ban,
ran 9.77 seconds in Brussels last
month—the fastest-ever time by
an over-30.
However, his inclusion was
heavily criticised and fellow
nominee, Germany’s Olympic
discus champion Robert Harting, felt so strongly about the
former Olympic champion’s
nomination that he asked to be
removed from the list.
Kenyan
Dennis
Kipruto
Kimetto, who last month became the ﬁrst man to break two
hours three minutes for the
marathon, Qatari high jumper
Mutaz Essa Barshmi and French
pole vaulter Renaud Lavillenie,
who cleared 6.16metres to break
Sergey Bubka’s 21-year-old indoor world record, will now
compete for the men’s award.
New Zealand shot-putter
Valerie Adams, who extended
her winning streak to 56 competitions in 2014, is joined on
the women’s shortlist by Dutch
sprinter Dafne Schippers and
Ethiopia’s distance runner Genzebe Dibaba.
The winners will be selected
during the 2014 World Athletics
Gala in Monaco on November 21.
Agents to be vetted under new rule in Kenya
Kenya is to introduce a new licensing
system for foreign athletics agents in a bid
to stop their fabled distance runners being
exposed to doping products.
The move follows recommendations made
by a government-sponsored anti-doping
taskforce, which said corrupt sports agents
were manipulating some Kenyan athletes
into using performance-enhancing drugs.
Kenya was pushed to investigate by the
World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) after
17 of its athletes tested positive between
January 2012 and June 2013, some of
them for using the blood-boosting drug
Erythropoietin (EPO). Kenyan Sports
Minister Hassan Wario said a vetting board
independent of Athletics Kenya will be set
up to approve a list of agents allowed to
operate in the country Wario, who made
public the findings of a three-month investigation into allegations of widespread
doping among Kenyan athletes, called “for
a severe punishment to those who knowingly engaged in the vice.” The task-force
report, which did not uncover any evidence
of the use of the drugs among top athletes,
said the “few reported cases were aided
and abetted by professional doctors, man-
agers and agents.” “We are liaising with
relevant authorities including WADA to see
that further punitive action may be taken
against offending individuals, athletes,
officials and organisations,” Wario said. The
minister said Kenya is in the process of setting up a new national agency to be known
as Anti-Doping Agency of Kenya (ADAK) to
improve the management of anti-doping in
the country. “We have set aside more than
five million shillings ($562,000, 439,000
euros) for anti-doping activities and programmes. We are seeking ways and means
of improving this amount”.
BOXING
Golovkin tries to keep knock
out streak alive against Rubio
AFP
London
G
ennady Golovkin puts his unbeaten
record and World Boxing Association
middleweight world title on the line
today against resilient Mexican Marco
Antonio Rubio—with an eye toward even bigger
things ahead.
A victory for the hard-hitting Kazakh star,
30-0 with 27 of those victories coming by
knock-out, could get him in line to face the
winner of the projected ﬁght between World
Boxing Council champion Miguel Cotto and
Saul “Canelo” Alvarez in Las Vegas in May.
Golovkin’s brutal three-round demolition
of former champion Daniel Geale of Australia
at Madison Square Garden in July was his 17th
successive knock-out—a streak stretching back
to 2008. But he has yet to ﬁght on a major money-spinning pay-per-view television card, and
at 32 he’s eager make that leap.
Promoter Tom Loeffler certainly believes
Golovkin should be there.
“Rubio is clearly the best move at this time for
GGG and will lead to the winner of Cotto/Canelo
ﬁghting him or vacating the WBC title,” he said.
“How some people rate Cotto over GGG at 160 is
beyond me.
“Nobody that I have spoken to thinks he
would have a chance against GGG.”
Although Golovkin offers plenty of ﬁreworks
in the ring, he eschews the pre-bout baiting and
trash-talking beloved of many ﬁght fans. Trainer Abel Sanchez told the Los Angeles Times that
when he ﬁrst met Golovkin, he didn’t believe he
could be vicious in the ring.
“He’s too well-mannered,” Sanchez said, although that assessment changed when he began training Golovkin in California. When he
hit the mitts, I felt it all over, down to my toes,”
Sanchez said.
Golovkin, who launched his professional career in Germany after winning a silver medal
at the Athens Olympics, spent much of 2013
training with Sanchez at Big Bear, in the mountains east of Los Angeles.
The bout with Rubio at the StubHub Center
in the Los Angeles suburb of Carson—home of
Major League Soccer’s Los Angeles Galaxy—
sold out quickly.
Extra seats and a standing-room section
were added—a sign not only of Rubio’s ability
to draw a large following of Mexican-American
fans but also of Golovkin’s growing popularity.
Rubio, 34, brings a 59-6-1 record to the bout.
Since a 2012 loss to Julio Cesar Chavez jnr he’s
6-0, although none of those ﬁghts were against
top-ﬂight middleweights.
“He’s got power. He’s got a very good left
hand,” Golovkin said. “He does a great job in his
ﬁghts and he’s got a good record. I know it’s not
an easy ﬁght for him or for me. But the fans will
really enjoy it.”
Tough defence for Donaire
On the same card, Nonito Donaire of the
Philippines defends his World Boxing Association featherweight world title against Jamaican
Nicholas Walters.
Donaire, who has won titles at 112, 118 and 122
pounds, has recently lacked the dominance he
enjoyed in an outstanding 2012 - when he went
4-0 with two knock-outs in world title ﬁghts.
He’ll be making his ﬁrst defence of the featherweight title he won in Macau in May, when he
defeated South African Simpiwe Vetyeka in a
ﬁght that ended in an anti-climactic technical
decision. In Walters he’ll be taking on a hardhitting ﬁghter hungry for success in his ﬁrst
world title ﬁght.
Donaire brings a record of 33-2 with 21
knock-outs to the ﬁght, while Walters, ﬁghting
for the second time in the United States, is 24-0
with 20 knock-outs.
“He’s a very powerful puncher,” Donaire acknowledged. “Anybody can see that. And that’s
what we’re looking out for is his power. I mean,
I have the same thing.”
A
I knew I was clean
Troicki said that while he tries
to bury bitter memories of the
sanction he received after be-
Nadal not certain
of playing at
London finale
Rafa Nadal says he could
miss the season-ending ATP
World Tour Finals next month
because of appendicitis.
The injury-plagued Spaniard,
who has only recently returned from a wrist problem,
is on antibiotics and hoping
to delay surgery for appendicitis until the end of the
season.
However, with the eight-man
London showpiece looming,
the world number three said
he was not certain he will be
there.
“I have had weeks of injury
so it was not an easy season
for me at the end, I have to
do the surgery but I have to
find the right moment,” the
14-times grand slam champion told Sky Sports.
“I need to see how things go
and how my body accepts
the antibiotics, so after all the
things that have happened
over the last few weeks - let’s
see. “I will try to do my best
(to be in London) but I cannot
say, I do not know a hundred
percent.”
Nadal, along with Novak
Djokovic, Roger Federer
and Stanislas Wawrinka,
has already qualified for
the tournament with US
Open champion Marin Cilic
also virtually guaranteed
a debut appearance. The
likes of Andy Murray, Tomas
Berdych, David Ferrer and Kei
Nishikori are scrambling for
the remaining three spots.
ing informed - erroneously as it
turned out - that he could postpone a blood test by 24 hours due
to feeling poorly in April, 2013,
in Monte Carlo, the episode remains distasteful to him.
“That you didn’t do anything
wrong and you are being punished is the worst feeling,” he
said. “One year is a long time in
any sport. They told me at the
tribunal hearing that if I had just
taken something illegal in my
body I would have gotten a lesser
sentence. As it turned out, 12
months was the minimum punishment for missing a test.
“And the International Tennis
Federation lawyers were trying
to get me banned for two years.
But it’s over now. Inside myself I
know I was clean and not trying
to do anything wrong. I had good
lawyers but you feel like you don’t
have any chances (in the hearing).”
Troicki said there won’t be any
hard feelings when he plays Murray despite statements from the
Scot calling Troicki “unprofessional” in the entire blood-test
episode.
GENNADY GOLOVKIN
Tennis preparations
taking shape for Rio
International Tennis Federation (ITF) executive vice president Juan
Margets says preparations for the Rio Olympic tennis tournament
are progressing to the extent he can virtually visualise the event.
“You see pictures and plans—but when you actually experience the
venue it’s unique and to tell the truth we are excited and optimistic,”
he said. “The centre court is coming to fruition and you start to
imagine how the tennis Olympic stadium will look,” Margets, a onetime Spanish youth champion, told AFP in an interview.
Tennis was on the programme for the first modern Olympiad in Athens in 1886. It was dropped in 1928 but returned at the Seoul Games
in 1988. Rio is set to host a number of top names including London
2010 champion Andy Murray, as well as the likes of world number
one Novak Djokovic, clay king Rafael Nadal and legend Roger
Federer. The Rio tournament will take place out in the Olympic city
taking shape in the western suburb of Barra de Tijuca, with the 164.8
million reais ($70 million, 54.5 million euros) venue officially set to
be ready by the third quarter of next year, overcoming early delays.
Margets said he could not deny that there were early concerns at
the pace of construction.
“But yesterday’s visit confirmed things are on the move. We are
satisfied with how it is coming along.”
ITF president Francesco Ricci Bitti said in April that progress was
“a little disappointing” but organisers played down fears the venue
would not be ready. Margets, who heads the Davis Cup committee,
insists that “concern was always minimal” regarding the venue,
whose centre court will hold 10,000 people. Another court will hold
3,000 seats while there will be an additional court with a temporary
capacity for 5,000 fans. The tennis complex will comprise seven
further courts each with a capacity for 250 people and there will
also be six warm-up and training courts. The stadium will be able to
host an ATP 1000 event; Rio currently hosts an ATP World Tour 500
event. Early delays meant an ITF test event had to be put back from
August next year to December. Margets says that “in an ideal world
we would have liked to have a test event in the same week as the
Olympic Games with two fields of 64 players but we are very mindful of the fact this is not realistic.”
6
Gulf Times
Saturday, October 18, 2014
RUGBY
MILESTONE
SPOTLIGHT
‘Swoop’ joins
ranks of centurions
for the Wallabies
‘Adam has had a remarkable career and he deserves the accolades’
Australia’s Mr Dependable:
Adam Ashley-Cooper
Hooper clarifies
Beale comments
Reuters
Sydney
A
ustralia
captain
Michael Hooper was
forced to clarify his
backing for suspended
teammate Kurtley Beale yesterday, the eve of the third Bledisloe Cup Test against New Zealand in Brisbane.
As with the rest of the run-up
to today’s clash at Lang Park,
Hooper’s captain’s run news
conference was dominated by
controversy over the offensive
texts the utility back allegedly
sent about team business manager Di Patston.
The fallout from the row has
already seen Patston resign because of stress and put coach
Ewen McKenzie’s job in jeopardy, while Beale faces his Australian Rugby Union (ARU) contract being torn up after a Code
of Conduct Tribunal next week.
Hooper came under ﬁre from
ARU chief Bill Pulver this week
for backing his New South Wales
teammate and moved to clarify
his comments yesterday.
“We don’t condone the messages or things Kurtley has done
in the past but hopefully there’s
an outcome for him where he
can stay in Australian rugby,” he
told reporters in Brisbane.
“As a mate, as a team mate and
as a fellow player, our support is
there with him but that’s not to
mistake the fact that we don’t
condone the messages and the
incidences that have occurred.”
Australia lost their last two
Tests in the Rugby Championship in South Africa and Argentina and have already ceded the
Bledisloe Cup with a 12-12 draw
and a 51-20 defeat in the ﬁrst
two tests against the All Blacks
this season.
While the poor run of form
has only added sense of crisis
surrounding the Wallabies camp
this week, inside it there had
been a unity of purpose and the
squad was “tight”, Hooper said.
“When moments like this occur, you realise how good it is
playing for the jersey and playing for your country,” he added.
“We’re taking on the number
one team in the world. We’ve
missed the mark a number of
times over the last couple of
years and this is a chance to
draw the series.
“I think some of the guys are
licking their lips.”
Flanker Hooper has never been on the winning side
against New Zealand in seven
attempts but feels that if the
Wallabies put their best game
together, they can challenge the
All Blacks.
“The All Blacks have shown
they can hold onto a lead so
we’ve got to be going out there
and from the whistle put on a
physical display in defence and
in the carries,” he said.
“If we are able to put in a
physical performance and show
everyone that despite what’s
happened this week we’re able
to turn it around, that’s what I
want out of this game, to show
how much we care and try our
hardest to get the result.”
ASADA resumes peptide case against
Australian Rules club
Reuters
Sydney
F
ormer Australia coach
Robbie Deans once described Adam AshleyCooper as the glue that
held the Wallabies together and
rarely has the versatile back’s
ability to bring coherence to the
side been needed more than in
his 100th Test.
The fallout from the row over
texts allegedly sent by Kurtley
Beale about a team official in
June have left the Wallabies in
crisis and coach Ewen McKenzie clinging to job by his ﬁnger nails ahead of today’s Test
against New Zealand.
If the Wallabies respond
at Lang Park with the sort of
backs-to-the-wall
perform-
ance that the more optimistic
Australians are hoping for, you
can be sure Ashley-Cooper will
be at the heart of it.
The 30-year-old has mostly
taken a back seat to more spotlight-hungry team mates in the
nine years since he made his
Test debut against South Africa
in extraordinary circumstances
in Perth in 2005.
While the more vaunted talents have all suffered ﬂuctuations in form or fortune, however, Ashley-Cooper has rarely
had a bad game whether at fullback, in the centres or on the
wing, where he will start today.
Such reliability has earned
him nicknames like “Mr Fixit” or “Mr. Dependable” in
the media but to his team
mates it is “Swoop” who will
join George Gregan, Nathan
Sharpe, George Smith, Stephen
Larkham and David Campese
as an Australian test centurion.
“Adam has had a remarkable
career and he deserves the accolades which come with joining what is an extremely elite
group of players to have played
100 games for Australia,” McKenzie said this week.
“It’s a massive honour and a
true testament of his ability to
play at a consistently high level
over such a long period of time.”
Ashley-Cooper is related to
the aristocratic British family
of the Earls of Shaftesbury but
grew up on the Central Coast of
New South Wales just north of
Sydney.
After an early ﬂirtation with
tennis, he followed his Wallaby
uncle Graham Bond into union
with the ACT Brumbies, earn-
ing his ﬁrst cap after just three
Super Rugby starts.
Famously, he was about to
settle down to watch the match
with a meat pie and a beer when
he was sent scuttling back to
the dressing room to suit up after Clyde Rathbone was injured
in the warm-up.
He was to wait nearly two
years for his second cap but
from then on has been a virtual ever present in the green
and gold, playing every single
minute of the 2011 World Cup
campaign, for example.
Some of his best moments
include a brilliant individual
try when Australia beat New
Zealand in Hong Kong in 2010
and the winner against the
British and Irish Lions in the
second Test victory in Melbourne last year.
Seven of his 28 tries have
come against the All Blacks
and he would dearly love to
wrest back the Bledisloe Cup
from the New Zealanders next
season—it is already lost this
year—before he heads abroad
after the World Cup.
He did achieve one career
goal this year, though, securing
the Super Rugby title with the
New South Wales Waratahs after scoring two tries in a Man of
the Match performance in the
ﬁnal against the Canterbury
Crusaders.
Off the ﬁeld, Ashley-Cooper
has been a prominent in promoting the gay rugby World
Cup, the Bingham Cup, which
earned a glowing plaudit from
rugby’s most prominent gay
player, former Wales international Gareth Thomas.
Melbourne: Australian doping authorities resumed the
case against 34 current and
former players at Australian
Rules club Essendon yesterday by issuing them with formal allegations of the use of a
banned substance in 2012.
The allegations are the result
of Australian Sports AntiDoping Authority’s protracted
investigation into the possible
use of banned substances in
sport.
“The Australian Sports AntiDoping Authority (ASADA)
today issued amended ‘show
cause’ notices to 34 former
and current Essendon football
players for the use of a prohibited substance, Thymosin Beta
4, during the 2012 season,” a
statement issued by ASADA
read.
Thymosin Beta 4 is a peptide
hormone which promotes
growth, the use of which is
banned under the World AntiDoping Agency (WADA) code.
The players had already
been issued with show cause
notices in June but the cases
were put on hold pending a
legal challenge to the ASADA
probe in the Federal Court
precipitated by an injunction
served by the Australian Football League (AFL) club.
Essendon coach James Hird,
who recently completed a
12-month ban issued by the
AFL for bringing the game
into disrepute, has also undertaken legal action.
“The resumption of action
against the players follows the
Federal Court’s dismissal of
the applications by the Essendon Football Club and James
Hird on 19 September 2014,”
read the ASADA statement.
“Notwithstanding James
Hird’s appeal of the Federal
Court decision, ASADA has
agreed to a formal request by
the legal team for the bulk of
the players to expedite the
‘show cause’ notice process.”
The players have 10 days
to respond to the notice,
although ASADA said they
would be sympathetic to
requests for extensions to
that period given the evidence
totals some 350 pages for
each case.
BOTTOMLINE
NFL franchises show big interest in Hayne
AFP
Sydney
N
FL franchises and US-based
agents are showing serious
interest in Jarryd Hayne
after the Australian rugby
league superstar announced an unprecedented code swap to American
football, his manager said yesterday.
Hayne, who last month won the National Rugby League’s highest individual honour, the Dally M Medal, for the
second time, announced his bombshell decision on Wednesday, despite
not having a contract.
His manager Wayne Beavis said he
had since been inundated with interest in the 26-year-old fullback, who
has played 176 games for the Parramatta Eels, scoring 103 tries.
“There is literally hundreds of
emails I am trying to answer,” Beavis
told the Sydney Morning Herald.
“There are agents, there are clubs,
there are production companies, you
name it they are all here. It is massive,
it has exceeded our wildest expectations.
“I have got emails from clubs that
are showing more than keen interest, I
have had about 20 agents contact me
overnight so there is not any shortage
of people wanting to look after Jarryd.”
Hayne, who said it had been a lifelong dream to play in the NFL, recently
visited the reigning Super Bowl champions Seattle Seahawks, but said he
had no deal and would be a free agent.
Beavis said he would meet Hayne
to discuss details of his move and he
was expected to ﬂy to Los Angeles
next week to begin training for the
NFL Combine—a week-long scouting
showcase—in February.
He then hopes to either enter the
NFL draft in July or sign with a club as
a free agent.
“He will probably go over there for
six months of his own volition and
spend time just learning the ropes and
learning about the game,” Beavis told
the newspaper.
“He will need another agent over
there, I have already told him that and
we are shifting through an avalanche
of information to make sure we ﬁnd
the right person.”As well as being a star
performer for Parramatta, Haynes has
also played 20 State of Origin matches
for New South Wales and won 12 caps
with the Kangaroos, the national team.
Australia’s woes of no interest
to determined McCaw
New Zealand skipper Richie McCaw
is not that interested in the turmoil
in the Wallabies camp ahead of Saturday’s Bledisloe Cup Test today and
much more concerned about how the
All Blacks react to a rare defeat.
The world champions were beaten
for the ﬁrst time in 23 tests when they
lost to South Africa in Johannesburg
two weeks ago to bring a anti-climactic end to their third straight Rugby
Championship triumph.
So despite the toxic row over Kurtley Beale’s text messages that has
completely overshadowed Australia’s
preparations for today’s match, McCaw said the All Blacks had been focusing on eradicating the errors in
their game.
“To be honest, from my point of
view, it hasn’t really entered into what
we’re doing,” he told reporters in Brisbane after the captain’s run.
“We’re playing the Wallabies and
when you are an All Black coming off
a loss, it hardens your resolve to play
well.
“And all that extra talk is not going
to help us or hinder us in any way, I just
hope we have a good performance tomorrow night.
“A big part of this week has been
focusing on what we need to get right
and brushing up on the things we
didn’t get right last time out.”
The 27-25 defeat to South Africa was
clearly still playing on McCaw’s mind
and he is determined the team learns
the lessons from it today at Lang Park,
where Australia achieved their last
victory over New Zealand three years
ago.
“What we didn’t get right two weeks
ago was we gave them too much ball,
turned it over too easily with poor skill
execution,” he added.
“Against good teams like the Africans and the Wallabies, they’ve got
good enough players to make you pay.
So we’ve got to make sure we don’t let
that happen.
“We were down three tries to one
at halftime and it’s a tough old road
back when you give a good team those
chances.”
Gulf Times
Saturday, October 18, 2014
7
SPORT
BASEBALL
NFL
Ishikawa powers
Giants past Cards
into World Series
‘My thought was, ‘OK, if this gets out, it’s going to be fantastic,’’ said Ishikawa
Darrelle Revis: The
win is the thing
New England Patriots cornerback Darrelle Revis
MCT
Foxborough, Massachusetts
T
here was no game-saving interception, and no
game-winning touchdown catch, either.
Nothing spectacular for cornerback Darrelle Revis in his ﬁrst
game against the Jets as a member of the Patriots team he once
loathed.
Just a good, solid game and
a big-time pass breakup when
the Patriots needed it most
in crunch time of the fourth
quarter. And, of course, a hardfought 27-25 win over the Jets
at Gillette Stadium.
“The only thing to focus about
is us getting the win today,” said
Revis, who signed a two-year,
$32-million deal with the Patriots in the offseason after being
rebuffed by the Jets on a shortterm megabucks deal. “It was a
tough game for us, and it came
down to the end. Good teams win
these tough games like this. We
stuck in there as a team and we
fought strong today.”
Revis played almost exclusively against the Jets’ No. 1 receiver,
Eric Decker, and did a good job
of keeping him in check. Decker
ﬁnished with four catches for 65
yards and no touchdowns.
Revis was at his best in the
fourth quarter, when he broke
up a pass intended for Decker on
third-and-4 from the Jets’ 16.
The Jets were forced to punt, and
Ryan Quigley’s 30-yard kick gave
the Patriots excellent ﬁeld position at the Jets’ 46. Tom Brady
then threw a 19-yard touchdown
pass to Danny Amendola to give
the Patriots a 27-19 lead.
Geno Smith threw a 10-yard
touchdown pass to Jeff Cumberland with 2:31 remaining to
bring the Jets within 27-25, but
his two-point conversion pass
to Jace Amaro fell incomplete.
The Patriots sealed the win when
they blocked Nick Folk’s 58-yard
ﬁeld-goal attempt with no time
left on the clock.
“This is a historical rivalry,”
said Revis, who once called Bill
Belichick a “jerk” when the cornerback played for the Jets. “It’s
been going on for years and years,
and it will probably continue to
keep on being a rivalry. You just
never know what you’re going to
get in these types of games, and
they’re always tough.”
Revis said he didn’t take any
extra motivation from playing
the Jets. It wasn’t personal.
“No, a win is a win,” he said.
“I’m excited for this team. We’re
5-2. The main goal for us was to
win this game and be ﬁrst in the
[division], and we accomplished
that as a team.”
There was talk that Revis was
anxious to be involved in the offense and possibly line up in the
red zone. But with the outcome
in doubt until the very end, Revis
didn’t make any appearances on
offense.
No problem. All that mattered
was the ﬁnal score.
“It’s just football to me,” he
said. “It doesn’t make any difference. An away game is an away
game and a home game is a home
game with a rivalry. It doesn’t
matter where you play. Same
thing.”
San Francisco Giants Travis Ishikawa celebrates his home run in the ninth inning against the St. Louis Cardinals in game 5 of the National League Championship Series.
MCT
Los Angeles
N
ed Yost is in the World Series.
Don Mattingly and Matt Williams can walk freely around
their towns.
In an October packed with managerial decisions gone wrong, the other guys
are off the hook. Mike Matheny made
the biggest blunder of the postseason
Thursday, entrusting the ninth inning of
an elimination game with a tie score to a
starting pitcher who had not appeared in
three weeks.
“That’s on me,” Matheny said after the
San Francisco Giants beat the St. Louis
Cardinals, 6-3, to qualify for the World
Series again.
That was accountability, not regret.
Matheny was not apologizing for his decision, at least not publicly. Matheny’s
Cardinals were eliminated from the playoffs, stunningly and swiftly, after the
manager bypassed half a dozen relievers in favour of Michael Wacha, who last
came out of the bullpen 14 months ago.
For the Giants, the hero was Travis
Ishikawa, who did not have a job in
April. The major leaguers were playing.
He was not.
Ishikawa has a job now. He is the left
ﬁelder for the National League entry in
the World Series, after he hit the walk-off
home run to lift the Giants.“I remember hearing the crowd just going crazy,”
Ishikawa said. “My thought was, ‘OK, if
this gets out, it’s going to be fantastic.’”
The home run was the third of the
game for a Giants team that had not hit
any in the ﬁrst four games of the NLCS.
The Giants won the series, four games
to one. They are the ﬁrst team to represent the NL in the World Series three
times in ﬁve years since the Atlanta
Braves did it in 1995, ‘96 and ‘99.
Matheny was left to explain how his
team’s season ended with his closer
stranded in the bullpen.
The Cardinals were six outs from
sending the series back to St. Louis, leading, 3-2, and turning to trusted setup
man Pat Neshek.
The lead lasted all of three pitches, the
third of which was clobbered by Michael
Morse deep into left ﬁeld and barely inside the foul pole. Morse raised his hands
skyward as he rounded the bases, AT&T
Park erupted into a deafening roar, and
the Giants had tied the score, 3-3.
The Cardinals had closer Trevor
Rosenthal ready for the ninth. They had
Randy Choate, their left-handed specialist, ready to face any or all of the three lefthanded batters the Giants had lined up in
the inning. They also had at their disposal
a strikeout artist, Carlos Martinez, and a
ground-ball artist, Seth Maness.
Why risk losing without using the
closer? “We can’t bring him in in a tie
game on the road,” Matheny said, indicating he wanted to save Rosenthal for a
potential save situation.
Wacha did not make the Cardinals’
four-man playoff rotation, limited to
162/3 innings after the All-Star break because of a shoulder injury. With the season on the line, Wacha was the guy.
Pablo Sandoval led off the ninth inning
with a single. Hunter Pence ﬂied out,
but Brandon Belt walked on four pitches.
Wacha threw two balls to Ishikawa _ six
consecutive balls _ then threw the 96-
mph fastball that Ishikawa hit to end the
Cardinals’ season.
After the game, Matheny apologized
to Wacha for putting him in a tough spot.
“I’ve pitched in the postseason before,”
said Wacha, the MVP of last year’s NLCS.
“I’ve pitched some tough innings. I’ve
pitched in some hostile environments. I
was ready for it.”
Was it reasonable to expect him to have
sharp command after not pitching for
three weeks?
“I don’t know,” Wacha said.
Said Wainwright: “There’s nobody else
you want out there, whether he’s pitched
in a while or not. You take your chances
with your best athlete.”
Did Wainwright expect Matheny to use
Wacha in that spot?
“I stay out of it,” Wainwright said.
In explaining his decision to use
Wacha, Matheny essentially indicted the
rest of his bullpen.
“We’ve had some other guys who
haven’t exactly had pinpoint control,”
Matheny said. “We liked his stuff.
“I don’t know if anybody could expect
him to be sharp. That’s on me.”
NHL
Kings blank Blues in
1-0 shootout
Jonathan Quick of the Los Angeles Kings.
NBA
MCT
Los Angeles
Lakers look bad in any county
MCT
Anaheim, California
T
here are a handful of
reasons for exhibition games. Get players in shape. See what
schemes need work. Make a few
extra bucks at the ticket office.
Hope nobody gets hurt.
For the Los Angeles Lakers,
though, it has been a historic
October for not-so-pleasant
reasons.
They got drilled again in another exhibition, 119-86, against
Utah in front of a sparse Honda
Center crowd.
The Lakers have now experienced their worst two-game
stretch in exhibition history,
adding Thursday night to a
41-point loss Sunday to Golden
State.
That makes consecutive losses totaling 74 points, easily outdoing their previous exhibition
low of 47 points in back-to-back
defeats in 2012.
Kobe Bryant scored 27 points
Kobe Bryant
and Carlos Boozer had 17, but
that was about it for the Lakers, who suddenly can’t make a
three-point shot. They’ve gone
11 consecutive quarters without
scoring from beyond the arc,
missing all ﬁve attempts there
Thursday.
Rookie Julius Randle was held
out of the second half because of
the dreaded “coach’s decision”
and Steve Nash couldn’t suit up
yet again.
Lakers Coach Byron Scott
liked one thing about the game.
“That it’s over,” he said.
In defense of the Lakers, they
were without Nick Young, Jeremy Lin, Xavier Henry, Ryan
Kelly, rookie Jordan Clarkson
and Nash, whose case gets more
curious every day.
Nash aggravated his back
Wednesday while lifting travel
bags at home and did not accompany the team to a sched-
uled event at a casino that night
but, surprisingly, told Lakers
trainer Gary Vitti on Thursday
afternoon he wanted to play
against Utah.
So Nash went on the court
an hour before the game, shot
around for a while and went back
to the locker room. He never
made it back to the court.
Randle didn’t make it to the
second half. He was bothered
by blisters on the bottom of his
feet but they were a secondary
reason for not playing after the
second quarter.
Scott said it wasn’t a punishment, but “I still don’t think the
last couple of games that he’s
played as hard as he can play.”
At least there was Bryant. He
made 10 of 23 shots in 28 minutes and showed a few things
against Utah.
1) You still can’t leave him
wide open. He moved around a
solid screen by Jordan Hill and
drilled a 17-footer alone on the
right side.
2) The pump fake can still
work. He got rookie Rodney
Hood to bite on one in the ﬁrst
quarter, drawing a foul and converting a three-point play.
3) He can still be a play-maker.
He drove past Gordon Hayward,
hung in the air for a bit and
found Boozer underneath for an
easy basket. On another play, he
took an offensive rebound and
immediately found Boozer underneath for a basket.
4) He also still loves motivation.
He didn’t enjoy being the
25th-best player in ESPN’s annual preseason rankings last
season, so he certainly didn’t
like being No. 40 this season.
“I’ve known for a long time
that they’re a bunch of idiots,”
Bryant said. He kind of smiled.
Bryant got some support from
his coach.
“I would just hate to be one
of the guys that doubted him,”
Scott said. “I see where he’s
come from to this particular
point after the (Achilles) injury and I know he’s going to get
stronger. I think he’ll have the
last laugh.”
T
he Los Angeles Kings
and St. Louis Blues
reached back into the
2012 archives, dusted off
the script and produced one of
their oldies.
You know, those lack-of-offense, grind-it-out classics from
late in the 2011-12 regular season,
highlighting the best of Kings
goalie Jonathan Quick and his
Blues counterpart Brian Elliott.
Quick and Elliott were on the
case once again, and neither allowed a goal in regulation Thursday night at Staples Center. The
issue was decided in a shootout
with the Kings winning, 1-0.
It was the Kings’ third straight
victory after they opened the
season with losses to the Sharks
and Coyotes, the latter in overtime. St. Louis has not recorded
a win at Staples Center since
March 22, 2011.
Quick was especially sharp,
making 43 saves, including four
in overtime.
The only player to score in
the shootout was Kings center
Jeff Carter. All three Blues players _ T.J. Oshie, Alex Steen and
Vladimir Tarasenko _ were unable to score.
Oshie was the star of the shootout for Team USA at the Olympics
this winter in Sochi, Russia.
For Quick, it was a career milestone. With the shutout, he tied
Kings’ legend Rogie Vachon for
career shutouts with 32. He came
close to tying the mark Sunday
against the Oilers, losing the shutout bid in the ﬁnal 30 seconds.
Typically, Quick underplayed
the achievement in his televised
postgame interview.
“It’s two points,” he said. “It’s
more about the wins than the
shutouts.”
Elliott faced 18 shots and was
on his game, in particular, in the
third period. One of the Kings’
best chances came on the power
play with Ian Cole off for crosschecking Kings left wing Tanner
Pearson. Elliott made a ﬁne glove
save on Kings defenseman Drew
Doughty, who was between the
circles, at 8:32.
Doughty’s frustration was visible, and he had plenty of company.
During one third-period sequence, Elliott was forced to
play with defenseman Jay Bouwmeester’s stick after he broke his
own stick.
Quick had his highlight moment in the third period a few
minutes later after Elliott’s save
on Doughty, robbing Bouwmeester with a terriﬁc glove save
with seven minutes remaining.
Two Kings went down to block
the shot but Quick was there,
keeping the game scoreless.
8
Gulf Times
Saturday, October 18, 2014
GOLF
SPOTLIGHT
Birthday boy Els takes
charge in Hong Kong
‘I played quite nicely and a 65 was exactly what I needed to do’
AFP
Hong Kong
E
rnie Els marked his 45th birthday in style by
grabbing the halfway lead at the $1.3 million
Hong Kong Open yesterday, as defending champion Miguel Angel Jimenez missed the cut.
Four-time major winner Els shot a ﬁve-under-par 65
to lie on nine-under, two strokes ahead of the chasing
pack at the co-sanctioned European/Asian Tour event in
the southern Chinese city.
Starting on the 11th, the South African great blitzed
six birdies before stumbling slightly with one bogey and
then battling hard to prevent another two dropped shots
at the Hong Kong Golf Club.
“I played quite nicely and a 65 was exactly what I
needed to do,” said Els, playing in the event for the ﬁrst
time.
The golf hall of famer made a ﬂying start at the par 70,
6,699-yard course in Fanling—picking up his six shots
over the ﬁrst 11 holes.
But a lapse of concentration at the short par-4 fourth
led to trouble off the tee and a bogey after he tried to go
for the green with his drive.
Els, nicknamed “The Big Easy” due to his tall frame
and smooth swing, then made two lengthy par-saving
putts on his 16th and 17th.
“I had a chance of scoring really low today and I kind
of lost my momentum,” he said.
Starting on the 11th, the South African
great blitzed six birdies before stumbling
slightly with one bogey and then
battling hard to prevent another
two dropped shots at the Hong Kong Golf Club
“The shot was on but I didn’t really have to go for it.
It was a bit of a mental mistake on my part,” Els added of
his drive on the fourth.
“But I’m looking forward to the rest of the week and
obviously I’m in a good position,” he said, adding that he
would celebrate his birthday but “without alcohol”, after
organisers presented him with a cake.
France’s Raphael Jacquelin, and Australian pair Scott
Hend and Cameron Smith trail Els on seven-under par.
Els ﬁnished his round just as an unﬁt Jimenez was
starting his.
The Spanish veteran blamed food poisoning for an
opening round 72 and said he was still unwell as he
signed for a 70 on Friday, missing the cut in a tournament he has won four times.
“It’s very disappointing,” the 50-year-old said. “The
problem was my physical condition. I got sick and yesterday was very, very hard.
“Today was a little better but I’m still not ﬁt to play.
It’s something I couldn’t do anything about.”
“I came here with the intention of defending my title.
It’s a pity,” he added.
Asia’s only male major champion Y.E. Yang also failed
to make the weekend, ﬁnishing on six-over par, as did
Belgian Nicolas Colsaerts who crashed to a 79 after a
nice 66 on Thursday.
Overnight leader Jyoti Randhawa got home in level
par to lie six-under.
The Hong Kong Open is the penultimate event of this
season’s European Tour.
Ernie Els: Shot a 65
LPGA
F
rance’s Karine Icher hit
a four-under 68 yesterday to surge to the second round lead at the
LPGA KEB-HanaBank Championship in South Korea.
Icher had five birdies against
one bogey to move to fiveunder for the US$2.0 million
tournament on the par-72,
6,364-yard Ocean Course at
the Sky72 Golf and Resort club
in Incheon.
Icher started the day at
one-under in a tie for 15th and
promptly moved to two-under
with a birdie on the opening
hole. She also finished strongly,
with three birdies over her final
four holes.
Icher said she faced “a completely different course” on
Friday with the wind constantly
changing direction, and credited her work with coach Brian
Mogg for helping her with the
gusty conditions.
“This week, my coach was
here and we practised a lot of
low shots,” she said. “It seemed
to pay off. Here, it’s always
windy. I’ve never played in Korea without wind. Low shots are
pretty strong in my game now.
Hong Kong: Flamboyant Spaniard Miguel Angel
Jimenez vowed to return to
Hong Kong next year to seek
a record-breaking fifth title
after the defending champion
sensationally missed the cut
yesterday.
The 50-year-old was seeking
to become the first player
to win the co-sanctioned
European/Asian Tour event
three times in a row but was
undone by a bout of food
poisoning in the southern
Chinese city.
Jimenez triumphed at the
Hong Kong Golf Club in 2004,
2007, and 2012 before last
year’s victory but failed to continue his dominance this week
as he struggled to rounds of
72 and 70.
The veteran, who is the oldest
winner on the European Tour,
said he was still hopeful of becoming the first golfer to win
at Fanling five times. He also
wants to join 14-time major
winner Tiger Woods, British
Open legend Tom Watson and
Germany’s Bernhard Langer
as the only players to win
the same tournament on five
occasions.
“I’ll be back next year, of
course,” said Jimenez. “I love
this place. I love the golf
course and I will definitely be
here.”Jimenez never looked
himself over two rounds on
the 6,699-yard course, blaming a bad reaction to something he ate on Wednesday
night.
After an opening round of
two-over par, the Spanish star
needed to make a charge up
the leaderboard yesterday
but it never materialised.He
made two quick birdies, but
four bogeys in a row stopped
him in his tracks. A chip-in for
eagle on the 13th was a rare
highlight but it was too little
too late as he signed for a
level-par 70.
“Yesterday I walked around
the golf course like a phantom,” he told reporters. “Today
I tried hard and made some
birdies but I also made too
many bogeys.”
Jimenez, renowned for his
love of cigars, fast cars, and
red wine added he would now
turn his attention towards next
week’s Macau Open—an Asian
Tour event.
ROUND-UP
Icher surges to second
round lead in S. Korea
AFP
Incheon
Jimenez
vows to be
back after
missing cut
“There are four or five tournaments left for us, and I’d love
to win one. There’s nothing else
I am looking for,” Icher added.
Beatriz Recari of Spain and
American Brittany Lincicome
both ended one stroke behind
Icher, after shooting their second straight rounds of 70 yesterday.
They are ahead of half-dozen
golfers at three-under for the
tournament, including the 2012
champ Suzann Pettersen.
Park In-Bee, world number
two who can rise to the top
spot with a win in Incheon,
managed only a 73 Friday with
two birdies and three bogeys,
which dropped her to even for
the tournament and a tie for
24th.
Lydia Ko, the third-ranked
golfer who can also claim the
top spot with a win, shot a
three-under 69 Friday to move
to two-under.
Kang Hae-Ji of South Korea,
who led after the first round
with a 67, managed only a 75
Friday to fall to two-under.
Defending champion Amy
Yang had a disastrous round of
79, with eight bogeys against a
single birdie.
There are no cuts to this
72-hole tournament, the only
LPGA stop in South Korea.
France’s Karine Icher in action
in Incheon yesterday.
Cink, Laird tied in Las Vegas
AFP
Las Vegas
A
merican Stewart Cink, winless since
his British Open triumph ﬁve years ago,
remained patient through a slow start
before surging into a share of the ﬁrst
round lead at the $6.2 million Las Vegas Open on
Thursday.
Cink was even par after seven holes in the Nevada desert event, but the 41-year-old bided his
time and was rewarded with seven birdies in the
ﬁnal 11 holes for a seven-under-par 64 at the TPC
Summerlin.
Scot Martin Laird joined Cink one stroke ahead
of compatriot Martin Knox, while Japanese
ace Hideki Matsuyama was two strokes behind
among a group that included Australian leukemia
survivor Jarrod Lyle.
“Even though you know it’s a low scoring event
you have to remember that it’s a long week,” sixtime PGA Tour winner Cink told PGATour.com.
“I looked up at the leaderboard when I was on
eight green and I hadn’t made a birdie yet and
somebody was already six under. That’s a little bit disheartening but you just have to remind
yourself that it’s not a downpour of birdies from
the very beginning.” Cink was unfairly cast as a
villain when he beat Tom Watson in a playoff at
Turnberry in 2009, depriving the sentimental favourite of a sixth Open title at the age of 59 and
what would have been one of golf’s greatest ever
feats.
Few would have guessed that Cink’s career
would then stagnate. Cink made 21 of 25 cuts last
year, but could not post one top-10 ﬁnish.
“Last year was a close call year,” he said. “It
could have been really good. I didn’t have many
good weekends. I especially had some rough
patches that lasted four or ﬁve holes. I’d give myself a C and that’s probably being generous.”
Laird, meanwhile, continued the form he displayed last week in the Tour season-opener in
California where he tied for third.
He hit every green in regulation but was frustrated that some of the birdie chances did not fall
on the back nine, though a 40-foot putt for birdie
at the last hole squared the ledger.
“I’d missed a bunch of opportunities on the
back nine (so) it was awfully nice to see that go
in,” said Laird, a three-time Tour winner.
Defending champion Webb Simpson opened
with a 69 in his ﬁrst start since being on the losing
American team at the Ryder Cup, where he played
only two matches, posting a loss and a halve.
Taiwan’s fast-rising Chan
eyes Rio Olympics
Singapore: Being a late starter, Chan Shihchang had to work hard to rewrite Asian Development Tour (ADT) records and hopes to continue
his stellar form to achieve his dream of representing Taiwan at the Rio Olympics.
The 28-year-old has become the ﬁrst player
to claim three titles in a single season in the ADT
circuit, which also earned him playing rights on
the Asian Tour for the second half of the current
season.“Hopefully I can continue to stay in that
position as the leading player from Chinese Taipei (Taiwan) so that I qualify for the Olympics in
2016,” Chan said in an ADT statement.
“It would be an honour if I can represent Chinese Taipei in the Olympics.”
Chan secured his maiden title in Malaysia last
year before adding three more trophies to emerge
as the player with the most wins on the ADT since
its 2010 inauguration.
“My next aim is to win on the Asian Tour,”
said Chan, the ADT Order of Merit leader with a
record $66,991 income.
“I broke into the world’s top 200 after winning
the Taifong Open in July. It is my ﬁrst time getting into the top 200 and it feels great. I’m still
hoping to grab more victories this year to boost
my ranking.” A member of Taiwan’s bronze medal
winning amateur team in the 2006 Asian Games
and an admirer of former world number one Tiger
Woods, Chan has displayed tremendous mental
fortitude in his three triumphs which came via
playoffs.
Gulf Times
Saturday, October 18, 2014
9
SPORT
BASKETBALL
MOTOGP
Qatar beat UAE for
third straight win in
GCC Championship
‘...optimistic about the next few games, which are very crucial’
Q
atar won their third straight match in
the GCC Basketball Championships in
Dammam, Saudi Arabia, yesterday.
Four-time winners Qatar followed
up their win over Kuwait (78-53) and Oman 7549) with a 71-53 victory over two-time champions United Arab Emirates.
The tournament, which is being held for the
men’s teams of the Gulf region, will determine
the two nations that will make it to the 2015 Asia
Cup in China.
Yesterday’s win was also witnessed by the
Qatar Olympic Committee secretary general
and the Qatar Basketball Federation president
Sheikh Saoud bin Abdulrahman al-Thani.
“I’m not only happy about winning over
United Arab Emirates today but also with
my players who tuned their game well,
despite a few mistakes,” Qatar coach
Fragias said
Qatar is scheduled to play hosts and threetime champions Saudi Arabia today and Bahrain
tomorrow.
Qatar’s Greek coach Vasilis Fragias was happy
with the performance of his players.
“I’m not only happy about winning over
United Arab Emirates today but also with my
players who tuned their game well, despite
a few mistakes. The fact we finished the first
half with a huge lead (38-22), shows the rising
level of Qatar’s game. This makes me optimistic about the next few games, which are very
crucial,” Fragias said.
Action from the GCC Basketball Championship match between Qatar and UAE in Dammam, Saudi Arabia, yesterday.
Lorenzo tops
opening practice
for Aussie MotoGP
AFP
Phillip Island, Australia
Y
amaha’s Jorge Lorenzo (right) clocked the
fastest time in opening practice yesterday,
setting up a battle with newlycrowned world champion Marc
Marquez in this weekend’s Australian MotoGP.
The two-time world champion topped the time charts with a
fastest lap of one minute 29.909
seconds around the sweeping
Phillip Island circuit as he looks
for his third consecutive MotoGP
race victory.
Lorenzo, who is battling his
Movistar Yamaha teammate Valentino Rossi and fellow Spaniard
Dani Pedrosa for second overall
in the world championship, was
the quickest rider despite coming off his bike unharmed on the
hairpin turn four in the second
session.
The trio is separated by just
three points, with Rossi (5th) and
Pedrosa (10th) within a second of
Lorenzo’s best practice time.
Lorenzo was 0.147sec quicker than Forward Yamaha racer
Aleix Espargaro’s best time of
1:29.729 from the ﬁrst practice
session and Marquez’s best lap of
1:29.752 in second practice.
Lorenzo, who won last year’s
MotoGP at Phillip Island on the
way to losing the world championship by four points to Marquez, is coming off two wins and
is hitting form at the right time.
“We are competitive now and
strong,” Lorenzo said.
“It is not going to be easy to
keep winning races, because
there are four riders in very good
shape. But our level is high.”
The pressure is off Marquez
this weekend after he secured
this year’s world title last weekend in Japan but he has yet to win
at Phillip Island in the premier
class after winning in the 125 race
in 2010.
“Today we focused on working
with the new tyres that Bridgestone have brought for this circuit, which are totally different
from what we have used for the
rest of the year,” Marquez said.
“This is also a circuit that requires a very exact set-up, because it has some very fast corners. In the afternoon practice
session we took a step forward
and I felt much better on the
bike, but I think we have to keep
working because there are still
things that we can improve.”
Italian Ducati rider Andrea Iannone was 0.2s down on
Lorenzo in fourth and he was also
ﬂung off his bike in the afternoon
session.
Andrea Dovizioso (Ducati
Team) and nine-time world
champion
Rossi
(Movistar
Yamaha MotoGP) both ﬁnished
the day inside the top six, while
Marquez’s Repsol Honda teammate Pedrosa was 10th.
Local hero West tries to fly; Ramos
learns new circuit
Qatar Olympic Committee secretary general and the Qatar Basketball Federation president Sheikh Saoud
bin Abdulrahman al-Thani watched the match in Dammam, Saudi Arabia, yesterday.
Phillip Island, Australia: QMMF Racing Team rider Anthony West
“tried to fly” in the first free practice session for the Australian
Grand Prix, when he had the biggest highsider in many years of
racing.
The 33-year-old Queenslander got caught out in the second-last
corner of the track, a fast left-hander, and limped away with a
bruised foot, but was cleared to ride afterwards and to score 15th
place in the combined standings of day one.
Team-mate Roman Ramos also had to learn another new race
track. Even though he liked the layout of the fast and sweeping
Phillip Island circuit a lot, he struggled to get up to speed and
finished the day in 33rd position due to set-up issues.
“This morning I tried to fly,” West said after the session. “I had the
biggest highsider that I’ve had for a long time. With a Moto2 bike
you normally never have big highsides like that. My foot is a bit
sore, but it’s okay to walk and okay to ride, so it’s not a problem. I
hit the ground hard and knocked the wind out of myself. Luckily
the mechanics were fast to get me back out on the track and we
got a few more laps in.
“Unfortunately, we broke some parts on the suspension so we
couldn’t make a good set-up. But for the afternoon session, we
made a few changes, and I went faster and faster. Now I think we
are in a good position. I feel strong and there are just two corners
I need to work on, where I am quite slow. But on other parts of the
track, I am really fast. If we can work on what’s missing, I think we
will look good for qualifying tomorrow.”
Ramos said: “Phillip Island is another new circuit for us and it is
quite challenging and fast. I like the layout it a lot and it suits my
riding style, but it wasn’t a good day for us. We are still chasing a
better set-up, but I am sure that we will be able to improve tomorrow and climb a few positions in the time sheets.”
Qatar Shooting and Archery Federation Cup
Winners of the various categories on the podium with the guests on the second day of the Qatar Shooting and Archery Federation Cup at the Losail Shooting Range. The tournament concludes on October 25.
10
Gulf Times
Saturday, October 18, 2014
SPORT
CRICKET
DEAL
Kohli century takes
India to 2-1 series
win against Windies
‘Unlucky for us Virat got his form back against us’
Agencies
Dharamsala
Virat Kohli celebrates after scoring 20th ODI century.
T
he fourth ODI at Dharamsala yesterday started
and ended with turbulence for the West Indies. After they decided to pull
out of the tour with one ODI,
one T20I and three Tests still to
go, the Caribbean team, chasing
India’s 330 for 6, fuelled by Virat Kohli’s 20th ton, could only
manage 271 all out in 48.1 overs
to concede the series 2-1.
When the entire Caribbean
team
accompanied
captain
Dwayne Bravo to the toss in a
show of solidarity over a pay dispute with the West Indies Cricket
Board, there was a sense that it
is the beginning of some sort of
upheaval. It turned out to be that
way as reports coming during the
course of the Indian innings conﬁrmed that the game was the last
of this tour on account of both
players and the WICB failing to
reach a consensus.
As a result of the shocking development, Kohli, Suresh Raina
and Ajinkya Rahane’s excellent
batting efforts were put on the
back burner in front of a packed
stadium. Against such a backdrop, the idea of a West Indies
comeback was highly improbable. The conjecture was spot on
as the tourists gave up very in the
chase and weren’t it for Marlon
Samuels’ second ton (112 off 106
balls, 9x4s,6x6s) in the series
the margin of defeat could have
been much bigger.
“Unlucky for us Virat got his
form back against us. But we
wish him the best. Can’t fault
the effort of our boys,” Dwayne
Bravo said.
Samuels didn’t seem to be affected by the situation around
him and delayed the inevitable
for a considerable period.
Andre Russell chanced his
arm towards the end hitting six
fours and three sixes during his
23-ball 46 but that was that.
Among Indian bowlers, Akshar
Patel, who replaced Amit Mishra
for this match, impressed a lot
returning 2 for 26.
Bhuvneshar Kumar, Umesh
Yadav, Mohammad Shami and
Ravindra Jadeja also took two
wickets apiece. After being put
in to bat on a wicket partial to
batsmen, openers Shikhar Dhawan and Rahane hit the ground
running. Dhawan, in particular,
looked in good touch putting on
display plenty of pulls and cuts.
However, attempting one pull
Australia hand
coach Lehmann
contract extension
AFP
Melbourne
A
shes-winning
Australian coach Darren
Lehmann was handed
a one-year contract
extension, with senior officials
hailing his inﬂuence on the team.
Since assuming the role from
the sacked Mickey Arthur in
June last year, Lehmann has
steered Australia to seven Test
wins out of 13, with two drawn
and four lost.
His contract with Cricket
Australia was due to end in mid2016, but he has won an extra
year. “We have been extremely
pleased with the results Darren
has achieved with the team since
he came on board,” CA’s performance manager Pat Howard
said in a statement.
“He has helped create an excellent team environment that
has seen players thrive. We want
that to continue so we used the
winter period to work through
an extension to his current contract. Importantly it provides
continuity for the team and certainty for Darren heading into
a critical period for Australian
cricket.”
Lehmann was thrust into the
spotlight a few weeks before
Australia’s 2013 Ashes series in
England began when he was appointed to replace Arthur.
The 44-year-old former Test
batsman said he was proud of
his achievements so far, which
have included a ﬁve-nil Ashes
triumph over England last summer and a 2-1 win in South Africa
in March.
“I have thoroughly enjoyed
the time I have had in the job
and am proud of what we have
achieved so far,” he said.
“I want to continue with the
work we have done on and off
the ﬁeld with the team, as I feel
we are heading in the right direction.
“I will be judged by results,” he
added. “If the team is not performing, then I am answerable.”
Lehmann’s relaxed, inclusive
style has been apparent from
the outset. While preparing for
a warm-up game against Somerset last year, shortly after being handed the job, he called
the team together, asked for the
stop-watch to be started, and
declared that no team meeting
during his tenure would ever go
longer than 30 minutes. After
that, it was off to the pub.
In the words of opener Chris
Rogers, it was a moment in
which the players realised that
they could enjoy their cricket
again, and that the weight was
off their shoulders.
Lehmann has also been known
to deliver a serve for a loose shot
or silly decision, but he himself
said the major change he had
noted in the Australian setup
since he came on board was in
the atmosphere of the squad.
Australia begins a two-Test
series against Pakistan in Dubai
on October 22.
DARREN LEHMANN
too many, he found Darren Bravo
at deep midwicket off a slightly
quicker delivery from Russell for
a run-a-ball 35.
Kohli started from where he
had left off at the Feroz Shah
Kotla Stadium, dropping anchor
in the middle straight away. The
run-scoring responsibility fell to
Rahane who did a good job of it.
However, he was lucky to have
been dropped by Jerome Taylor
at ﬁne-leg when he was on 34.
He went on to make 34 more
- his seventh ﬁfty - and his participation in the 70 and 72-run
stands with Dhawan and Kohli
set the tone for a big score. His
lbw dismissal by Sulieman Benn
wasn’t the right decision as the
ball pitched outside off and was
missing the stumps as shown by
replays. New batsman Raina also
started from where he had left
off in Delhi, showing good touch
from the word go. His 31st ﬁfty
came in the blink of an eye off 46
balls and not once he looked in
discomfort. Kohli took 65 balls
to complete his ﬁfty but after
that he upped the ante. Kohli
and Raina had added 138 when,
against the run of play, the latter edged one wide delivery from
Taylor to Denesh Ramdin behind
the wickets. Raina hit three fours
and ﬁve sixes during his innings
of 71 off 58 balls.
Kohli’s 20th ton came in a
dramatic fashion - by means
of an overthrow. MS Dhoni (6)
and Jadeja (2) departed in quick
succession but Kohli (127 off 114
balls, 13x4s, 3x6s) ensured there
was a formidable total on the
board. His last 77 runs came off
49 balls while India scored 94 in
the last 10 overs. He was run out
off the last ball of the innings.
Ambati Rayudu hit a big six in
the last over bowled by Taylor
and remained unbeaten on 12.
SCOREBOARD
INDIA
Rahane lbw b Benn 68
Dhawan c Bravo b Russell 35
V. Kohli run out 127
S. Raina c Ramdin b Taylor 71
M. Dhoni run out (Pollard) 6
R. Jadeja c Russell b Holder 2
A. Rayudu not out 12
Extras (lb-6 w-3) 9
Total (for 6 wickets, 50
overs) 330
Fall of wickets: 1-70, 2-142,
3-280, 4-290, 5-300, 6-330.
Bowling: J Taylor 9-0-77–1,
J Holder 9-0-52-1, A Russell,
7-0-48–1, S Benn 8-0-30–1, M
Samuels 10-0-54–0, D Bravo
6-0-51–0, K Pollard 1-0-12–0.
WEST INDIES
D. Smith c Shami b Yadav 0
D Bravo b Patel 40
Pollard c Dhawan b Kumar 6
M. Samuels b Shami 112
D. Ramdin c Patel b Jadeja 9
D Bravo lbw b Jadeja 0
D. Sammy c&b Patel 16
A. Russell b Yadav 46
J. Holder c Raina b Kumar 11
J. Taylor b Shami 11
S. Benn not out 1
Extras (lb-10 w-9) 19
Total (all out, 48.1 overs)
271
Fall of wickets: 1-1, 2-27,
3-83, 4-120, 5-121, 6-165, 7-222,
8-239, 9-260,10-271.
Bowling: B. Kumar 10-2-25-2,
U. Yadav 9-0-44-2, M. Shami
9.1-0-72-2, V Kohli1-0-14-0,
A. Patel 10-1-26-2, R. Jadeja
9-1-80-2.
Black Caps Taylor, Milne to
miss South Africa ODIs
New Zealand’s former skipper Ross Taylor and paceman Adam
Milne will miss the upcoming one-day international series against
South Africa because of injury, New Zealand Cricket said yesterday.
Top order batsman Taylor, a veteran of 137 ODIs, has a calf problem,
while Milne is struggling with an elbow injury and both were ruled
out of a warm-up match for the series against Ireland in Hamilton on
Saturday.
Fast-medium swing bowler Tim Southee is battling a shoulder injury
but should be fit to face the Proteas in the first of three one-day
matches in Mount Maunganui on Tuesday.
Batsman Kane Williamson, who has a wrist problem, will miss the
Ireland match and the first of the South Africa encounters but
should be available for the final two matches of the series in Mount
Maunganui next Friday and Hamilton on Oct. 27.
New Zealand are ranked seventh in the world rankings and will be
looking to the series against the second-ranked South Africans to
help with their preparations for the World Cup, which they are cohosting with Australia early next year.
SPOTLIGHT
Azam, Sohail hit centuries in warm-up game
AFP
Sharjah
B
abar Azam and Haris Sohail hit hundreds for Pakistan ‘A’ as Australian
off-spinner Nathan Lyon took two
wickets in a warm-up match in Sharjah yesterday.
Azam, who turned 20 on Wednesday, was
114 not out to stake claims for a Test place
whith another hopeful Haris Sohail batting on
an unbeaten 103 as Pakistan ‘A’ reached 306-3
at close on the third of the four-day match at
Sharjah stadium.
That gave Pakistan ‘A’ an overall lead of 338
after Australia declared their ﬁrst innings at
the overnight total of 273-8. Pakistan ‘A’ had
made 305-8 declared in their ﬁrst essay.
Azam, who led Pakistan in the Junior World
Cup in Australia in 2012, hit nine boundaries
and three sixes during his stylish display after openers Ahmed Shahzad (59) and Shan
Masood (19) gave the home team a sound 62run start. Sohail, who is in Pakistan’s initial
squad of 19 for the Tests, has so far hit nine
fours and three sixes.
Australian bowlers had another good work
out with Lyon standing out. Lyon, who will
spearhead Australia’s spin attack in the two-
match Test series starting in Dubai from October 22, removed Masood and Israr Ullah off
consecutive deliveries to ﬁnish with 2-49.
Shahzad was run out after hitting eight
boundaries in his second half-century of the
match, a much needed boost for Pakistan’s
struggling batting which saw them lose the
preceding three-match one-day series 3-0.
Australia also had the consolation of allrounder Mitchell Marsh bowling seven overs
without showing signs of the hamstring injury
that forced him to miss the limited over series.
Marsh is also likely to ﬁll in as ﬁfth bowler in
the Test series. Lyon said Australia were happy
with the practice. “We’re pretty happy,” said
Lyon. “This game is really about an opportunity
for all the players in our squad (before the Test).”
Azam hoped his hundred would earn him
some recognition. “Scoring a hundred is always a great honour and to have done it against
a team like Australia is even bigger,” said Azam.
“It’s my aim to score runs and play for Pakistan seniors.” The second Test starts in Abu
Dhabi from October 30.
Brief scores: Pakistan ‘A’ 305-8 dec (Asad
Shaﬁq 108 not out; S. O’Keefe 3-76) and 306-3
(Babar Azam 114 not out, Haris Sohail 103 not
out; N. Lyon 2-49)
Australia 273-8 dec (A. Doolan 104, S. Smith
58)
BABAR AZAM
Gulf Times
Saturday, October 18, 2014
POSTER
Miguel Agnel
Jimenez
Spanish golfer
|
25 wins as a professional
|
Ryder Cup winner
|
The Mechanic
11
Saturday, October 18, 2014
MOTORSPORT
GULF TIMES
MOTOCROSS
Jaffar wins double in
Losail MX opening round
‘This championship will be stronger and more people from international countries can race with us’
By Sports Reporter
Doha
T
he opening round for Losail MX
Championship kicked off today
at the MX Track with the participation of ﬁfteen bikes divided into MX1 and MX2 category.
In MX1 qualifying, the fastest rider
was South African Le Roy Botha, the
runner up of the last season in this category. Botha raced a lap time of 1:59.792
on a Honda.
Another Honda, that of Kuwait’s Meshari Shaibah was second with a time of
2:01.724. Mohamed Jaffar, moved from
MX2 to MX1 this year, had the third best
time of 2:02.401.
In MX2 qualifying, Kuwait’s Barak
al-Jasmi was fastest in his category on
a KTM (2:07.595). Teammate Moaath
al-Ansari was second with a time of
2:10.262. Al-Ansari, last season’s MX1
champion, has changed to MX2 this
season.
In the ﬁrst race of the day, Kuwait’s
Meshari Shaibah led the race in the ﬁrst
three laps but Jaffar overtook him to
lead rest of the way for a win.
Jaffar was very excited about his win
in the new category. “I had been riding
in MX1 the last few years and achieved
a lot of titles. It was time to change
for more challenging goals and new
achievements,” Jaffar said.
Shaibah took the second place, ahead
of Le Roy Botha.
In MX2, Kuwait’s Barak al-Jasmi won
ahead of Bahrain’s Hasan Nooraldin
and Mohamed al-Hattab.
Jaffar won the second MX1 race too,
40.783 seconds ahead of Shaibah.
Botha was third yet again.
“First of all I would like to thank
QMMF. Honestly, every year it is much
easier for us to take part in their events
and we enjoy more and more. Hopefully
this championship will be stronger and
more people from international countries can race with us,” Jaffar said.
“Today the race was really tough,
as usual, and I would like to dedicate
my ﬁrst win of the season to my coach
Mohamed al-Balooshi as we have been
working for this for a long time. This
season, I am high on conﬁdence, because of the hard training and work
during the past four months. I am well
prepared for the season. Thanks to Balooshi Racing team, Adidas Kuwait,
KTM Kuwait, Sungarde and Red Bull”
In the second MX2 race, Nooraldin
won ahead of al-Jasmi and Kuwait’s
Abdullah al-Raqum.
There was a photo opportunity
with all the riders and authorities for
the opening round of the season. Qatar Motor and Motorcycle Federation
(QMMF) president Nasser Khalifa alAttiyah said that the level of the Losail
MX Championship is getting higher
and the competitors bring in more excitement in every season. He hoped
that more riders will join the championship in the coming rounds to create a
more challenging competition.
Trophies for the races were presented
by QMMF board member Sultan Zaher
al-Morraikhi, FIM Asia vice president
Essa al-Awadi and QMMF Public Relations manager Rashid al-Sulaiti.
The next round of Losail MX Championship is scheduled for November 21.
Mohamed Jaffar in action during the MX1 Race One in the opening round of the Losail MX Championship yesterday.
Jaffar won both the MX1 races in the opening round of the Losail MX Championship ahead of Meshari Shaibah and Le Roy Botha.
RALLYING
Sheikh Khalid wins Abu Dhabi; Qatar’s al-Kuwari third
Agencies
Abu Dhabi
S
heikh Khalid al-Qassimi won
the Abu Dhabi Rally, a candidate event for next year’s FIA
Middle East Rally Championship (MERC), in dominating fashion
yesterday.
Sheikh Khalid dominated the event
from day one, going fastest in the super
special stage held on Thursday night at
the North Handling area of the iconic
Yas Marina Circuit, the home of the
Etihad Airways Formula One Grand
Prix.
Yesterday, Sheikh Khalid opened
his campaign at the Ghantoot 1 special
stage over 18.71km, ﬁnishing 25.9 seconds ahead of his closest rival and over
one minute ahead of the new overnight
leader, Abu Dhabi Racing junior driver
Mohamed al-Mutawaa.
From there on, Sheikh Khalid was
in top form, winning all of yesterday’s
stages and storming to victory in a total
time of 1 hour 24 minutes 33.8 seconds,
3:05.3 minutes ahead of Sheikh Abdullah al-Qassimi in second with Qatar’s
Abdullah al-Kuwari 9:11.9 further back
in third overall.
“I would like to thank each and every
member of the organizing body; the or-
ganization of the Rally was ﬁrst class.
The stages were exciting and technically demanding in places, but thankfully we didn’t face any major obstacles
and won ﬁrst place,” Sheikh Khalid said.
“I would like to thank the Citroën Total
Abu Dhabi Rally Team for their consummate professionalism as always in preparing the cars to the highest standards.
I would like to add that I am very happy
for the Abu Dhabi Racing junior team
who I thought performed very well in
stages and we are looking to enroll them
in numerous future rallies so that they
can gain even more experience.”
“It was an exciting rally today; we
did our best to win but unfortunately
our tires did not perform well here in
Abu Dhabi despite being tested at Rally
Jordan,” second-placed Sheikh Abdullah said.
Qatar’s al-Kuwari said: “We have
really enjoyed the rally and its exciting
stages despite the hot weather. The organization was outstanding as were the
spectators. I would like to thank Sheikh
Khalid and the organizing committee
who delivered a fantastic Rally for all
involved.”
Abu Dhabi Racing drivers Mohamed
al-Mutawaa, Mansoor Belhelei, Mohamed al-Sahlawi and Saeed Bintouq
ﬁnished fourth, ﬁfth, sixth and seventh
respectively.
The event, jointly organized by Yas
Motor Racing Club and Abu Dhabi Racing, run over 453.48km with 153.44km
as the competitive distance over nine
stages and the remainder as the liaison
distance, drew a total of 15 cars.
Organising Committee chairman
Ahmed al-Kaabi said: “I would like to
thank everyone in the organizing team,
for their efforts in making the rally happen. Obviously safety is our top priority
at Yas Marina Circuit and thanks to the
efforts of the team the rally was a huge
success. We are looking forward to organizing the Abu Dhabi Rally next year
and for it to becoming a permanent of
the Middle East Rally Competition
rounds.”
PROVISIONAL RESULTS
1. Sheikh Khalid al-Qassimi / C. Patterson (Citroën DS3 RRC) 1:24:33.8
2. Sheikh Abdulla al-Qassimi / S. Lancaster (Ford Fiesta RRC) +3:05.3
3. Abdulla al-Kuwari / A. Mohamed
(Mitsubishi Evo 10) +9:11.9
4. Mohamed al-Mutawaa / S. Mcauley
(Citroën DS3 R3) +10:49.1
5. Mansoor Belhelei / K. al-Kendi (Citroën DS3 R3) +14:45.7
6. Mohammed al-Shalawi / G. Parry
(Citroën DS3 R3) +14:52.7
7. Saeed Bintouq / A. Harryman (Citroën
DS3 R3) +15:59.8
Qatar’s Abdulla al-Kuwari in action during the Abu Dhabi Rally.